Coker College Student Trent Edwards Presents Research

HARTSVILLE, S.C. (04/11/2012)(readMedia)-- Coker College student Trent Edwards of Greer, S.C., recently presented at the third annual Coker College Celebration of Academics Student Research Symposium. Continuing in a tradition that began during President Robert Wyatt's inauguration as the 16th president of the College in 2010, Coker hosted a week-long campus-wide Celebration of Academics April 9-13. This year's schedule also included presentations of student-faculty research and service-learning projects as well as a performing arts showcase. Edwards is a junior mathematics and computer science double major at Coker.

For his research project, "Parallelization of the Single Machine Weighted Tardiness Problem," Edwards used distributed computing environments as well as general purpose graphics processor calculations to obtain solutions to the single machine weighted tardiness problem. Speedups of over 10 times were obtained using traditional distributed computers, while speedups of over 100 times were obtained using graphics processors.

Edwards also presented "COMAP: Experiences with a Mathematical Competition." The COMAP Mathematical Contest in Modeling is a yearly international competition where teams of three undergraduate students are given an open-ended problem on a Thursday night, then must turn in a mathematically rigorous solution on the following Monday. The teams are allowed no help from any human sources and must rely on all of their mathematical and computational knowledge. This year, the problem involved determining a government agency's river management policy, which would allow visitors to a 225-mile stretch of river for an appropriate wilderness experience, resulting in rafting, camping and hiking. The teams were asked to determine the maximum number of visitors to the river, considering types of rafts (oars or motors), distance between camping sites and exposure to other visitors. The Coker team considered multiple models, including a graph theoretic model, a randomized constraint model, and a randomized choice model. Each model was compared and contrasted against one another.

Established in 1908, Coker College readies undergraduates for personal and professional success through a distinctive four-year program that emphasizes a practical application of the liberal arts as well as hands-on and discussion-based learning within and beyond the classroom. Coker is ranked among the "Best Colleges" in the South by U.S. News & World Report as well as The Princeton Review. Located in Hartsville, S.C., Coker is within two hours of the cultural, financial and recreational resources of Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston and Myrtle Beach.