59th Annual STS (1999–2000)
Finalists
Evan Matthew Fink

NEW YORK
Evan Matthew Fink, 17, of New York, submitted a computer science project for the Intel Science Talent Search, a study to unscramble data sent over noisy transmission lines. He focused on the properties of codes that are resistant to a single half-error. Such codes can be deciphered in spite of having a single bit erroneously changed a certain way. An example of half-error-resistant code is a message (composed of zeros and ones) that can be deciphered even if a transmission error caused a zero to be changed to a one, but not if a one was changed to a zero. He suggests that work in this field might lead to codes that are resistant to multiple errors thereby improving communications systems in the future. At Stuyvesant High School, Evan is captain of the math team and plays the trombone in the band. Hoping to play in a rock band, he taught himself how to play the drums after creating his own makeshift drum set of kitchenware and household items. He won the grand prize in the USA Mathematical Talent Search and his extracurricular interests include reading and tutoring. Evan is the son of Jonathan and Nancy Fink and hopes to study mathematics at MIT.