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Rebekah Overdorf '12

2011 Soar Student

Rebekah Overdorf '12

“The SOAR program gave me the opportunity to explore a part of computer science that I am very interested in and would have otherwise not had the opportunity to study in a formal setting.”

Hometown: Plainfield Township, Pa

Major(s): Computer Science/Mathematics

Project: The Complexity of Games

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Matthew Lang

Goal: My goal was to explore the complexity of popular board games and logic puzzle including Math-24 and Chinese checkers. In addition, I aimed to learn much more about computational complexity and the different classes associated with how difficult it is to solve a problem.

What I learned: I proved that my generalization of Math-24 is NP-Complete (which could potentially help solve the infamous problem does P=NP?). I also learned about the research process in the field of computational complexity and the amount of work that is necessary to solve just one small problem. This experience gave me a better idea of what I would like to study in the future and will no doubt help me as I continue on to graduate school.

Future plans: I am currently applying to graduate school Ph.D programs in computer science and hope to continue studying computational theory.