Patrick Kang
Personal Website
About Me
I am currently an 8th grader at Shenzhen Oasis International School in Shenzhen, China, and also a part-time data scientist, photographer, soccer winger, flight simulator pilot, Wikipedia editor, video game developer, and an applicant for 9th grade in an American high school.
Achievements
Interests
I am interested in Science and computer science. I first started doing all of this way back in grade 2 or 3, and I think I am lucky that our school has a good computing and science program. I am also interested in applied math, and I am currently writing two papers, as well as being a member of the school applied math club. I am also interested in History, especially the more modern stuff, and I have written a shortlisted essay for the John Locke competition, and I also follow a lot of current news. I am also in the school MUN club. For sports, I have been playing soccer for almost 9 years, and I recently started doing Rowing and Squash. I also started scientific photography two years ago, and I am very interested in that, and I also make a lot of model aircraft, which are really interesting too.
Computer Science Projects
Some of the projects that I have worked on
I have been studying computer science from grade 1, and I am very interested in it. I started programming in Scratch almost in 1st grade, and I also did some work in arduino and robotics when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade. The first language that I learned was python, and I learned C++ as well. I am mostly self-taught, and much of what I am doing now is with data analysis and some of the more practical and fun stuff, using relatively new tools that I either teach myself or ask ChatGPT about.
A small tank game I made for fun. My friends liked it and I am still adding features to it
One of my...milder...April Fool’s pranks
Data analysis projects
3D modeling work in Blender
USACO
Applied Math and Data Analysis
Back in 2020 at the start of the COVID outbreak, I got my hands on some COVID data and tried to predict the number of cases. I managed to fit a curve with the Boltzmann sigmoid function that turned out to have an R squared value of 0.999, which was astoundingly high. In the end, the cases did not peak at 50,000. There was a large rise in cases on Feb. 13, which I believe is linked to a mutation of the virus from the 20A to 20B clade, which happened at around the same time.
MidMCM
I also participated in the 2023 MidMCM, where I wrote a paper with two others on the Olympics. We helped the IOC determine how many medals and flags to prepare for the next Olympics (for the medal ceremony). We were considering things like ties, and the cases where one country would win more than one medal, etc. Eventually we came up with a paper that was definitely more complex than it should have been. Link here.
Football Penalties Paper
Recently I have also written a paper on penalties in soccer, using game theory to try to find an optimal way to take a penalty. I actually got some acceptable results, and I wrote a paper about it (which I am still working on). Here is the link to the paper (early access, possibly for a limited time :)
Scientific Photography
I got into scientific photography following a competition in school. These were images I took of a soap bubble last year. I also have photos of crystallization, displacement reactions, anatomical details of a mosquito, and more. Here is a folder with more of my work.
Soccer
I play soccer around once or twice a week including games. I have been playing for nearly 9 years, and three years in the school first team and I like to play anywhere on the wing. I have good vision and awareness and I often play as a playmaker as a winger (or wingback), or occasionally as a second striker or even a false 9. I am generally an early crosser, but when given the option to cut inside or continue down the wing, I will usually cut inside and play a slide-rule pass to the striker or take a shot. I am also a huge Tottenham fan, and I do my best to catch all the games provided it doesn’t interfere with my schoolwork.
Rowing
I started rowing two years ago and I have been doing it one or two hours a week ever since. I row for fitness and just for the sake of being out on the river.
Model Aircraft
I first got into model aircraft three years ago, when me and a couple of my friends built a simple model rocket. Since then, our aim has shifted from model rockets to actual fixed wing aircraft, because we actually wanted to control the aircraft. We started with foam board, and then shifted to 3D printing, and after that we even made a drone to capture the plane in the air
Student Council
Serving on the student council since third grade, I've facilitated student-leadership communication and helped organize major school events including the Halloween party, Christmas concert, and Disco, as well as spearheading a fundraiser for earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria.
Wikipedia
I started editing Wikipedia half a year ago when I wrote an email to Wikimedia asking them to unblock me (I could not edit because I needed a VPN, and VPNs are blocked on Wikipedia). I really got into it in September. I’ve made 108 edits and counting and participated in a Copyedit drive (and currently participating in one too), and I have one barnstar and also received two thanks. Overall, really nice to be part of this community. Apparently, my contributions have cleared up the grammar for a lot of readers.
