IAYM in Verse

One of our students - Bhavika Sharma - has composed the following!

IAYM is "Inviting All Young Minds",
With more innovative ideas of every kind,
And lots of Einsteins to find,
But not to become bookworms and get blind.

MSF is the team for making our future,
To bring the children and give them nurture,
With lots of inventive features,
The friendly, kind, loving and intelligent teachers.

Thoughtful lectures for everyone to learn,
Creating new formulas and learning with fun,
Instead of reading and reading and making eyes burn,
Give the power not from education to turn.

Very hearty thanks,
For making children get excellent ranks,
With lots of fun and many pranks,
And making us aware nothing within us lacks.

Readme - If You Can

Public key is (25060027,24087)

Method used: RSA encryption

Private key is ????????

Encrypted code is

18475690 16353297 5743680 5743680 6994256 3100512 18872933 16277707 3807486 1030672 18872933 3798005 6994256 11970423 18872933 7063003 16353297 16277707 10737901 3798005 10837629 22028366 24228033

Encrypted text is ª@@P`eËþeõPweÛËíõ}NÁ

Decrypted text  is ????

The encryption group consists of four young minds under the guidance of Dr. Sanjeev Agrawal and Ms. Shivani Wadehra. We have studied various methods of encryption which have developed from the simple Caesar Cipher to complex methods such as blowfish, AES AND RSA encryption. We studied extensively on RSA encryption, learning about modular congruencies and theorems such as Fermat’s little theorem and Chinese remainder theorem which form the basis of RSA encryption.  We also made a code on C++ to generate random prime numbers, encryption and decryption key to encrypt and decrypt messages using this method. Finally, we have developed our own method of private key encryption using an NP-hard problem.

Apart from encryption, we have also been working on a math communication project for the topic “Applications of Trigonometry”. IAYM 2010 so far has been a great experience. Although we work from 9:30- 5:00, it seems like the day is over in just a few minutes. Apart from the amazing mentors and the guest lectures, we have met amazing students who have a similar passion in mathematics and who have helped us further appreciate its beauty and hone our knowledge.

Team members- Karanveer Mohan, Pooja Singh, Gautam Nagpal, Bhavika Sharma 

PS-Private key was 13442791

      Decrypted text- Hello, can you decrypt?

The Final Frontier

The "space science group" consists of 10 high school students from classes X to XII:

"Space, the unconquerable dimension. What lies out there has left many people amazed. The simple idea of another universe is mind boggling. We, the new generation are trying to do, what many men at NASA did years ago. Limited by our resources, we thought of making a simple, but effective “water rocket”. The basic principles that it runs on are already present everywhere around us. The Water Rocket, that we planned to make was, not your everyday backyard experiment. What we planned to do was to control the rocket’s fight path, its trajectory and its stages. A rocket, which is designed to go to outer space, has 3-4 stages; these stages break off one by one after they run out of fuel, we planned to do the same. We are students from all over India, who have teamed up with our mentor Mr. Jatin Anand sir and vowed to build a rocket that would do what we all desired- reach the final frontier.

We started off small; on paper we drew basic guidelines to build us a rocket. Every one of us contributed to the designing of the rocket. Ideas poured in from every direction, and soon our creation was complete, well on paper at least. We were guided carefully, by our mentor, and soon we had a finalized design and parts ready at hand. The two groups that we were divided into were evenly balanced, so we had no problem in communication. As we started building our rocket we felt how different it is to do one thing in paper, and in practical. I really hope when we are done, we have a working 2-stage rocket. After all that testing and drawing, we also had a few laughs. Mathematics was also implemented everywhere. We learnt how to handle the data given to us, find the trajectory and have fun."

Abhishek Oswal, Anant Singh, Chandramani Verma, Deeksha Agrawal, Jeevan Singh Nayal, Kunal Maini, Pranav Obhrai, Raj Anmol Singh Garg, Sheena Arora, Vardaan Choudhari.

Virus-AntiVirus

“Silent Assassins - as the name suggests, are silently trying to assassinate PC’s by pursuing the Virus-Anti-Virus project. This uphill task has been undertaken by our team under the guidance of our mentor Mr Niteesh Sahni and with the dedicated support of Mr. Rahul, and is being carried out in assembly language. After grasping certain basic concepts of assembly language, we have started developing “Overwritten Virus”, which is one of the categories of viruses. We are doing this, so as to get a snapshot of how a virus actually searches for its host and infects by replicating itself.

Further, after getting the basic understanding of viruses, we will try to develop viruses with more complexities like companion viruses, parasitic viruses as well as source code viruses.MSF is simply awesome!! Along with the superb task of developing viruses, here we enjoy learning mathematics in a quite innovative manner. We wholeheartedly thank MSF for providing us a platform to enhance our skills by organising IAYM-2010. MSF ROCKS!!!"

Ankit Kumar, Biplob Biswas, Manika Bindal, Nandini Deka, Neha Singh, Reyaz Ahmed Siddiqui, Rishabh Bhasin, Ritwik Rath, Saurabh Kumar Saha, Shreyas Kapoor, Subh Vardhan.

IAYM on YouTube

Links to IAYM clips on YouTube:

• Slide show of images from the first days.
  
  
  
• Videos of the inauguration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Face Detection... the experience so far

"95% match….These are the words that the computer displayed in bold letters after we ran our first test. We have a crew of six members, who have been working on the project “FACE DETECTION”. The scope for the project is enormous. Although we have implemented some features of our own in the project like face isolation using probability, rgb and ycbcr colour modes, these ideas are yet to be perfected in practice.

To start with, we took a database of over 150 individuals each having 20 images and constructed image vectors from the matrices obtained. These image vectors consisted of 36000 pixels each and hence formed a subspace of R36000. An orthonormal basis of this subspace was found using the PCA(Principal Component Analysis) and SVD(Singular Value Decomposition Theorem). These vectors were arranged in order of their contribution to the database images. These were called the eigenfaces. It was further found that majority of the features of the face depended upon the initial few eigenfaces.

The test images were reconstructed using these eigenfaces. We also used K-means clustering to group various images of the same person in the database. However some of our endeavors failed during execution some of which were- Edge Detection, Hausdorff Distance Measurement, Circular Object Detection, Binary Image Method."

- Akshay Agrawal, Mukesh Kumar Tripathi, Parth Singh, Pooja Narula, Shashwat Goel, Vibhor Kalra

A Matter of Perspective

In this morning's lecture I asked the students to draw an approaching train - this is a favourite of mine when I need a break from the usual topics and it leads to nice discussions of perspective and geometry. Today's session went rather smoothly. In the past I have had students just stare blankly at their sheet of paper and refuse to draw!

But that's just my perception. Hopefully, this blog will start featuring students' voices too. We are collecting their comments to put up. In the meanwhile, check out Nitin Agrawal's blog. (Any other students with blogs? Let us know.)

The Bamboo Team

Along with the IAYM students, there is a group of students working on a special project - developing innovative uses of bamboo in educational aids and other devices. This is part of a yearlong project funded by the National Mission on Bamboo Applications, and being executed by MSF with the aid of designers and artisans who specialize in bamboo based designs.

	During June 2-3, we were visited by Ms Rebecca Reubens, Managing Director of RHIZOME. Rebecca is a designer with a particular interest in the use of bamboo towards promoting environmentally sustainable and socially just practices.
	In a workshop with Rebecca, two students jot down their pet likes and dislikes about their educational experiences.This was the first step towards formulating the goals of the project.
	The list grows longer.
	At the end of the session, the students have arrived at a list of principles they would like to demonstrate through bamboo-based devices, as well as the key properties these should have.

Three Musketeers...

Students in the TAFS hostel.

IAYM 2010 Day 1

	Students at the opening session in the Audio-Visual room of The Air Force School.
	Prof. Dinesh Singh, Director, MSF.
	The Space Science group with Jatin Anand.
	The Virus group with Rahul Kumar.

IAYM 2010 Day 1 - Part 2

	The Mathematical Biology group with Charu Sharma.
	The Alternate Energy group with Professors L M Saha and Shobha Bagai.
	The Face Detection group with Satish Pandey.
	TAFS campus. A retired Hawker Hunter of the Indian Air Force.
	TAFS campus.