Contents

• Week 1 (30/06 - 06/07)
• Week 2 (07/07 - 13/07)
• Week 3 (14/07 - 20/07)
• Week 4 (21/07 - 27/07)
• Week 5 (28/07 - 04/08)

Week 1 (30/06 - 06/07)

• Monday: We flied to JFK from PKX and arrived at Rutgers in the afternoon, June 29. Nadya and Ava showed us around here and brought us to buy some food. We also got some free pots, plaits and bowls from his office. That’s really convenient! On Monday, Larry showed us our offices and told us plans in the near future. I also sent emails to some professors, asking them whether they want to be my advisors. Unluckily, mang of them were busy in summer holiday. This searching pattern would still continue for some days. :(
• Tuesday: Today we attended a seminar about Formalizing mathematics with Lean and Mathlib. The professor introduced how to check a proof through these programms. Most of this seminar was understandable. To my surprise, The seminar also provided us with pizza! Delicious! :P
• Wednesday: On Wednesday and Thursday I mainly studied how to create my personl website. It was difficult for me as I was not very familiar with programm. But with chatgpt’s help, I successfully established my first website! Cool! This morning I met with Pro. Xia in his office. We talked about CS and what we wanted to do this summer. After that he sent me some papers, so I also spent some time reading them these days.
• Thursday: Today I finished contacting with professors and decided to work with Pro. Lirong Xia and Jie Gao. I met with Pro. Kangning Wang this afternoon and discussed about his work. I found it really interesting to me. Unfortunately, Pro. Wang would be busy this month, so he couldn’t advise me. But talking with him also gave me some deep insight into CS interacting with Economics. I read something about voting theory. Pro. Wang was very kind, and he was our alum! He brought us to a Vietnam restaurant for Vietnamese noodles, which tasted very good!
• Friday: Today was the Independence Day! So we travelled to New York. I imagined to meet some parades, but actually it was harmonious in the streets. I found many small stands selling cheap hats and souveniers. And we also went to many famous attractions, like the bull in Wall Street. It’s really a prosprous city! In the evening when we came back from New York, students in DIMACS organized a campfire party. We chatted, ate barbecue, and played football and baseball. In such a peaceful and exciting moonnight, I almost forgot all worries!
• Saturday: Free Time!
• Sunday: I concluded papers I read till now and prepared a simple model for tomorrow’s meeting.

Week 2 (07/07 - 13/07)

• Monday: Today I chatted with Pro. Xia online and went to Pro. Gao’s office. I introduced my primary opinions and model to them and discussed what to explore next. They gave me some directions, for example, structure balance, complexity analysis, and competition strategy. After that I searched some papers about these topics and studied from them.
• Tuesday: I read others’ websites and I thought I need to write briefly. Here was not my diary hhh. This week I mainly read some related papers, thought about literature review, and continued to write my model. I finished a small paper with 15 pages, including new ideas about dunamic analysis and competition strategy.
• Wednesday: Working!
• Thursday: Working!!
• Friday: Working!!!
• Saturday: Today we travelled to New York again! We took a boat to Liberty Island and saw Statue of Liberty. Memoriable Day!
• Sunday: Still working.

Week 3 (14/07 - 20/07)

• Monday: Finishing my model and preparing for meeting tomorrow.
• Tuesday: Today I had a meeting with Pro. Xia in the morning. The biggst problem we faced was our model may not make sense with election. There were lots of difficulties for us to overcome before reaching a powerful model in party’s view. So we needed to do extensions and tell a new story. Moreover, I finished my PPT for Thursday.
• Wednesday: I searched papers in Social Networks and Friedkin-Johnson Model, I planned to apply my model to opinion evolution and friend group formation. I listened to other students’ pre ifirst group. They have worked for two months, so their pre were a little bit abstract to me.
• Thursday: Today I gave a pre about my work in five minutes. I briefly introduced our motivation and models and I gave some examples, which I think is very clear. You can find my PPT here. In the afternoon, I read some materials about Economic Geography, including Why cities lose, which studies how votees distribute would affect the election results.
• Friday:
• Saturday:
• Sunday:

Week 4 (21/07 - 27/07)

Week 5 (28/07 - 04/08)