Hi!

I'm Jake

I enjoy building models in 3D and the data world. I love spending time with friends during marching band and on lacrosse field.

Maker Community

Data Science

Friends & Fun

A curious and hands-on high school sophomore

Maker Community

Making stuff is FUN -- I learned it through first playing with Legos, then 3D-printing and the FIRST® robotics program. I want to share the joy with others and build community.

Founder and CEO of

Youth 3D

I founded this non-profit organization to connect and learn with students interested in 3D printing, work together on meaningful projects with real world impact. Youth 3D partners with local schools, libraries, science fairs to give workshops and share information, bring first-hand 3D printing experience to children.

Robotics Sub-team Lead

FRC Team 341, Miss Daisy

Growing up, I was inspired by this FIRST® Robotics Competition (FRC) hall of fame team by my sister, whom I saw as a role model. I even traveled with Team 341 to robotics competitions during my elementary school years when my older sister was on the team. I'm so proud to be a part of Team 341 myself now and joining its leadership as a sophomore.

Data Science

Today we live in a world of data. I want to discover patterns and seek insights behind the data, from history to robotics competitions.

My first data science project grew out of a previous case study done by Harvard professor Graham Allision. In 9th grade, I worked with my history/enrichment teacher, whose class I enjoyed very much, to translate historical events into data. I learned different models for time-to-event data and programming in R. I also got input and suggestions on this project from talking to Professor Jermaine, Professor Subramanian and Professor Segerra; all of whom were in the Data Science department at Rice University. After completing the project, I published my first data science paper and presented the poster at an international conference. It was a very exciting and rewarding process I enjoyed fully.

I have started another data science project, and hope to use the research result to help my FRC Team 341 in future robotics competitions.

I presented my poster, Time to War in the Thucydides Trap, at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Washington, DC.

Selected Projects

December 2022 - Present

Explore the competition data of FIRST® Robotics Competitions (FRC) 2022 season, understand the quantitative strategy on how to pick alliance partners for the playoff round based on the performance during the qualification round, help my FRC Team 341 to automate our alliance selection process for future years.

August - September 2022

Presented the poster at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM), Section on Statistics and Data Science Education.

Published a paper (1st author), "Time to War in the Thucydides Trap", in the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) Proceedings.

December 2021 - May 2022

Worked with my high school teacher in World History, Mr. Chris McDaniels, and I completed a data science project inspired by Harvard professor Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap idea. Combing through the historical records of the 16 case studies, we quantify the time it takes from the engagement of a rising power versus ruling power competition to the breakout of actual wars. I modeled the time course data using R. We published a paper called "Time to War in the Thucydides Trap".

Publications

Jake Tan and Chris McDaniels. "Time to War in the Thucydides Trap", The 2022 Joint Statistics Meetings Proceedings, pp 1196-1202.

Friends & Fun

I love spending time with my diverse friend groups. In addition to hanging out with my friends in robotics and 3D printing, I also play trombone in the school marching band in the fall and lacrosse defense in the spring. My days with friends are filled with incredible camaraderie, happy memories and life lessons. My high school’s Boys JV Lacrosse team and Marching Unit help me discover and grow myself socially, athletically and musically.