- #1
Ryuzaki
- 46
- 0
Hello everyone! I'm a first-year math major, just bored out of my mind. So I thought of doing a project in math, to ease my boredom, and learn something new. My level of math would be Calc I, II, and basic ODEs.
Well, what I had in mind was to investigate if math can be used to fight crime (and it amazingly can!). I got this idea from the fact that the police of the city of Santa Cruz have successfully employed a mathematical model against burglaries, and reduced it by around 30% or so.
This is the original paper on the topic:- http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/110843356
But I reckon the level of math employed in the above paper is unscalable at my present level (I couldn't get a single word in the paper, though the equations looked beautiful!). So what I was wondering was whether an alternative model could be built, perhaps at a level of math that is definitely higher than what I'm aware of, but yet reachable if I put effort? I'm aware that statistical models can be built, i.e, assigning probability distributions based on crime data, but that's not exactly what I had in mind.
So can anyone give me ideas on how an alternative model can be built? Or if you have any other interesting problems requiring new & challenging mathematical thought, that would do well as a project too!
Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!
Well, what I had in mind was to investigate if math can be used to fight crime (and it amazingly can!). I got this idea from the fact that the police of the city of Santa Cruz have successfully employed a mathematical model against burglaries, and reduced it by around 30% or so.
This is the original paper on the topic:- http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/110843356
But I reckon the level of math employed in the above paper is unscalable at my present level (I couldn't get a single word in the paper, though the equations looked beautiful!). So what I was wondering was whether an alternative model could be built, perhaps at a level of math that is definitely higher than what I'm aware of, but yet reachable if I put effort? I'm aware that statistical models can be built, i.e, assigning probability distributions based on crime data, but that's not exactly what I had in mind.
So can anyone give me ideas on how an alternative model can be built? Or if you have any other interesting problems requiring new & challenging mathematical thought, that would do well as a project too!
Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!
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