Hi everyone! It’s Lindsay and McKenna with your day 15 blog
post. It’s hard to believe that we only have a week left!
Morning of Math
We started off this
morning with another class in Dr. Hutson and Dr. Harris’s hotel room. The morning’s subject was hypothesis
testing. This is something all of us do
every day, although we may not be aware of it or be making any explicit
calculations. Dr. Harris introduced the
concept by playing a game with cards. Zack picked 10 cards from a deck, one at a time, to see how many red
cards he would draw. We were all
surprised when the first four cards he drew were red, and by the 6th
or 7th red card we were all very suspicious. After Zack had drawn his tenth red card in a
row, Dr. Harris revealed to us that all of the cards in the deck except for one
were red.
Our suspicion of Dr. Harris’s deck is an example of using
hypothesis testing. We started off with
the assumption that half the cards in the deck were red and half were
black. If this assumption were true, the
likelihood of Zack drawing all red cards would have been extremely low (a 1 in
1024 chance). Statistical testing
follows a similar method. We first start
off with a “null hypothesis.” In the example from this morning, the null
hypothesis was that the deck contained half red cards and half black
cards. If the analysis makes it very
unlikely that the null hypothesis is true, we reject the null hypothesis.
Lunch with Lara Larberg
After class, we headed to Pammie’s Sammies for lunch and a
meeting with Furman alumna, Lara Larberg. Lara works for Universal Studios, and
while the May X is called “Math and the Mouse,” we thought it would be really
cool to sneak over to the “other side” to see how she uses math in her job at
Universal. Lara is the Assistant Project Manager for Universal, so basically
she manages over twenty interactive effects. Her most recent project is Volcano
Bay, which will be opening in 2017 in Orlando. Lara graduated summa cum laude
from Furman in 2006 with degrees in music and sociology. She also had a
non-degreed focus and passion for theatre. It was actually her involvement with
the Pauper Players that she credits for propelling her into her career. Lara couldn’t stress enough how important her
Furman education was for getting her to where she is today. She noted that
although it may not seem like she is using her two degrees specifically, she is
using all of the skills and connections she acquired at Furman. Furthermore,
she was also quick to point out that even though she started working more with
the creative side of things, she now works very closely with industrial
engineers. Her work combines art and math to produce an awesome interactive
experience.
Projects at the Park
After our meeting, we headed to Magic Kingdom to do a bit of
spying, otherwise known as more data collection. As yesterday’s blog post
mentioned, we all spent some time making observations about several characters.
Today, we were able to split off into our groups to focus on our particular
topics.
My (Lindsay), Mary Lib, Molly, and Maria’s group is
comparing FastPass+ lines to the regular standby lines. We want to determine whether getting a
FastPass actually saves you a significant amount of time. To do this, we are collecting data from the
three Mountains in Magic Kingdom—Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and
Space Mountain. Since we won’t be going
back to Magic Kingdom again until Tuesday (our last day!) today was our only
chance to collect data. Luckily, the
other groups were very supportive and helped us collected data. We collected many types of data, but my
personal favorite was counting the number of people entering and exiting the
line. I’m sure we all looked very
suspicious sitting by ride entrances and exits counting people walking by and
scribbling in notepads.
Like Johanna yesterday, I (McKenna) am in “the character
group.” While the data we were gathering was the same as yesterday (number of
families in line, number who entered and exited, time spent by the character
with each family, and number of autographs per family), the characters were
not. Today, we had the opportunity to observe Peter Pan and Aurora.
Magical Memories
After we finished meeting those characters, we took a detour
to see Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, for my own personal benefit. When I was just
over a year old, I went to Disney World for the first time. I had already
developed an affinity for Tigger, so when I saw the long line in front of me, I
just couldn’t handle it. I had to see Tigger IMMEDIATELY. I ran away from my
parents, skipped all of the other people in line, and attached myself to
Tigger’s leg. Since then, Tigger has remained one of my favorite characters,
and I have gotten a picture with him every time. This time, I was able to tell
Tigger the story of my toddler mischief, and he decided that it was his turn to
attach himself to me and not let go! Mary Lib also recreated some childhood
memories today. Not only did she ride Barnstormer again, but she also wore the same exact shirt that she wore while riding Barnstormer—twelve years later!
Fireworks Finale
By ten o’clock we were all finishing up with data collection
and were able to catch Magic Kingdom’s end of the night fireworks show, “Wishes.” The fireworks at Disney are spectacular,
probably some of the best in the world. Though we had all seen the fireworks show multiple times from the Big
Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster, for many in the group (including the
two of us) this was our first time watching the show from Main Street. The night ended with a special treat: a
projection show on Cinderella’s Castle. Clips from Disney films, including classics like the Lion King and newer
films like Frozen, were projected onto the castle, accompanied by music and
fireworks. It was the perfect ending to another great day of math and magic.
Written by: Lindsay Eddy and McKenna Luzynski
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