Projects

Calculus with Jupyter

Jupyter Book is a powerful tool to create accessible, free content for students in an alternative mode than traditional textbooks or online, third-party problem tools. Our textbooks will contribute to a future for secondary mathematics education (and beyond) that puts the instructors and students at the center of their education. We incorporate interactive & regenerative question banks, IPython notebooks, and step-by-step tutorials into the typical textbook experience. Meanwhile, we are building a suite of tools to help many courses, subjects, and universities participate in this paradigm shift.

My roles include content creation (both textbook and notebook activities), backend, user experience, and documentation.

Multiple sections of MATH 110: Techniques of Calculus I at Penn State University Park have already piloted this new resource ever since the Fall 2021 semester. My project advisor is Jan Reimann.

Technical Blog: Sifter

I maintain a technical blog dedicated to a variety of topics which interest me, including topics from mathematics, computer science, AI, machine learning, logic, gaming, and programming.

I have a few ongoing threads in development which will be broken up into multiple parts, especially in Minimum Description Length and Interpretability of Neural Networks.

You can find my blog: Sifter, through this link: https://sifter.ghost.io/.

ECoS GHG Inventory CY2019

The Eberly College of Science produced 28,152 metric tons of CO2-equivalent through its various operations during Calendar Year 2019.

Our greenhouse gas inventory presents a breakdown of emissions arising from utility use, air travel, commuting, Fleet leased and rented vehicles, vended supplies, high performance computing, and other sources. This report is the first work of its kind for Eberly College of Science, and only the second unit-level GHG inventory to be performed across The Pennsylvania State University.

We recommend that the College repeat this inventory on a regular basis as a metric of success in reducing its emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases and urge college leaders to explore the opportunities for action. Achieving greater sustainability and resilience will require a combination of systematic and individual actions across ECoS.

You can find the full report through my GitHub repository: https://github.com/RaymondFriend/inventory.git.

Predicting Trucking Price for C.H. Robinson.

As part of the IMA Math-to-Industry Boot Camp VI during the summer of 2021, I spent three weeks in a group of six tackling a problem posed by C.H. Robison, a third party logistics company based in Minneapolis, MN. They challenged us to find a good method for predicting the price of trucking both refrigerated (reefers) and non-refrigerated (vans) between North American markets over the span of long-term contracts lasting anywhere from 3-12 months.

We made use of univariate models: SNaive, STL, SARIMA, TBATS, and Prophet; as well as multivariate models: SARIMA, VAR, and Prophet. We also developed a new set of strategies to blend expert knowledge about an industry into the prediction models, including via case studies of various markets, exogenous variables for market codependency/covariance, and tipping point analysis.

I have included much of my code (mostly written in R) in my personal GitHub repository: https://github.com/RaymondTana/IMA.git