Covid-19 Simulator

Inspiration

Our project seeks to efficiently simulate the impacts of COVID-19. We created projections of predictions of the statuses of populations with COVID-19 using Markov Chains.

What it does

In our code, we manipulated canonical, normal, and absorption matrices. The addition, subtraction, and inverting allowed us to derive accurate probabilities.

How we built it

The challenge we have responded to is manipulating the Markov Chain into Java and modeling the complex mathematical concepts with Java within one day. We conquered those challenges by dedicating our time and effort into this project. On Friday night after 2000 PST, we made the blueprint for our code; on Sunday, we worked throughout the day from 0600 to 0000 hours of the next day.

Challenges we ran into

There were many errors in the program, such as syntax errors and compiling errors. It has been heard that debugging takes up a great proportion of time. We debugged them by not only doing the calculations manually to check, but also always printing intermediate outputs to locate the errors to better target our debugging.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are fascinated with the unique connections we made between mathematics and computing in the past few days. The COVID-19 simulator was built from the concepts of “Markov Chains” and “Matrices.” Our project allowed us to explore these concepts in great detail. The challenges we faced helped us further our knowledge and we are incredibly proud to see that the final product can be applied to usage with practicality.

What we learned

We created variations of our project in Java and Python to tackle the challenge at hand. This was the first hackathon for the majority of our team members. We all learned how to delegate out work and manage our time to produce the desired results. Additionally, we all explored the concept of Markov Chain in great detail. In two days, we have all become familiar with manipulating matrices and creating a Markov algorithm in our code. Working in two languages also exposed us to the different approaches we could take towards the same problem.

What's next for Covid-19 Simulator

If we were to expand on our project idea in the future, we would like to develop a high quality user interface, factor variability into our data sets, and provide the users with a broader range of predictions.