User:Dakota.Sullivan

Personal Info

Dakota Sullivan is a Computational Mathematics and Social Welfare and Justice double major at Marquette University.

Research Topic

Using statistical surrogates to estimate the behavior of storm surge during a hurricane or tropical storm. See here for more details.

Milestones

Weekly milestones can be found on our main project page, located here.

Daily Log

Week 1 (6/1 - 6/5)

Monday, June 1

• Attended introductory session; learned about REU program
• Met with Dr. Spiller and research group members
• Attended Systems lab orientation with Dr. Dennis Brylow
• Took pre-REU NSF survey
• Began introductory reading on Gaussian Stochastic Process

Tuesday, June 2

• Toured campus
• Filed paperwork with HR
• Attended library resources orientation with Heather James
• Met with Dr. Spiller

Wednesday, June 3

• Installed Python
• Met with Dr. Spiller to review Gaussian Stochastic Process
• Met with Dr. Brylow to learn about Marquette email and time keeping
• Tested optimization routines in Python

Thursday, June 4

• Determined routine for plotting in Python
• Attended talk by Dr. Factor
• Met with Dr. Spiller
• Determined research goals and project timeline
• Continued developing optimization routine and plotting algorithms

Friday, June 5

• Met with research group to finalize optimization algorithm
• Reviewed objectives of project
• Documented Goals and Milestones
• Downloaded LaTex

Week 2 (6/5 - 6/12)

Monday, June 8

• Met with Dr. Spiller
• Created methods to begin modeling maximum likelihood equation
• Developed a plot of our approximation in Python

Tuesday, June 9

• Created maximum likelihood function
• Worked through difficulties with singularity in our matrices
• Plotted approximation of theta optimization

Wednesday, June 10

• Corrected errors in the maximum likelihood function
• Determined optimal theta value
• Modified maximum likelihood equation to optimize multiple variables

Thursday, June 11

• Developed variance function
• Listened to sample presentation by Dr. Factor
• Met with Dr. Spiller, updated her on our progress and discussed paper by Westerink et al.

Friday, June 12

• Modified code to account for all approximated variables
• Tested our approximation methods for other functions
• Began reading Westerink et al.

Week 3

Monday, June 15

• Read through research paper (Westerink et al.)

Tuesday, June 16

• Met with Dr. Spiller
• Introduced to additional notes on GaSP
• Attended talk by Dr. Brylow

Wednesday, June 17

• Compared previous and new maximum likelihood equations
• Began developing a least squares model for our approximation
• Met with Dr. Spiller to discuss new maximum likelihood equation

Thursday, June 18

• Completed Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training
• Began implementing new maximum likelihood equation
• Integrated least squares model into maximum into approximation

Friday, June 19

• Finalized implementation of least squares model
• Tested approximation with multiple functions and inputs
• Added reference prior to maximum likelihood equation
• Met with Dr. Spiller
• Watched RCR training videos

Week 4

Monday, June 22

• Modified approximation function to allow multiple dimensions
• Developed algorithm to import test data
• Updated personal wiki page

Tuesday, June 23

• Tested import algorithm
• Met with Dr. Spiller
• Searched for errors in code
• Modified m(x) and v(x)