User:Lt67

Biography: My name is Lucas Talavan-Becker, and I'm from South San Francisco, CA. I attended a Jesuit high school called St. Ignatius College preparatory.

High School: In high school, I ran cross country and track for three years and played soccer for two years. I've also danced hip hop since I was eleven. If you would like to see me dance, here's a URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmmgtyfFirQ. I start farthest to the right.

Duke University: At Duke University, I run for the Varsity cross country team, and I'm majoring in civil engineering.

How to pronounce my name: Loo - kuhs (stress is italicized)

Great Challenges of Engineering: [1], David Brown, The Washington Post, last updated Friday, January 21, 2005, accessed Wednesday, September 22, 2010, (Provide Access to Clean Water)

MATLAB Demonstrations My favorite demonstration on MATLAB is the traveling salesman. The purpose of the demo is to create a circuit connecting a certain number of cities while traveling the shortest distance along the way. The selection of the cities is totally random and the number of cities is decided by the user. I enjoy the demo because it's unpredictable. The user has control over the number of cities, but he or she doesn't have control over which cities are chosen. Therefore, the demo is always producing a different circuit. If I were to predict a certain circuit, I'd typically have few intersections, and the circuit would probably take the shape of a rectangle with certain juts in the middle to account for the Midwestern cities. However, MATLAB sometimes has bizarre, intersecting circuits that don't appear to represent the shortest distance between the cities at all. Nonetheless, after consideration, I see how the program came to its conclusion. Seeing MATLAB map out the shortest distance is entertaining especially if the circuit takes an unusual shape.