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Cookie(X) = 1/2, Lawrence M. Lesser

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This poem applies the concept of expected value, denoted E(X), to the context of any limited resources two parties desire. Usually, "you divide, I choose" keeps pieces equal enough to preempt charges of unfairness. But if one piece is much larger, many distrust the unbiased (in expected value) process of a coin flip giving each person the same chance at the bigger piece and the same cookie amount on average: E(X) = (1/2)p + (1/2)(1-p) = 1/2

Teaching Mathematics With Poetry: Some Activities, Alexis E. Langellier

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

During the summer of 2021, I experimented with a new way of getting children excited about mathematics: math poetry. Math can be a trigger word for some children and many adults. I wanted to find a way to make learning math fun—without the students knowing they’re doing math. In this paper I describe some activities I used with students ranging from grades K-12 to the college level and share several poem examples, from students in grades two to eight.

Dear Duck-Billed Platypus, Michael J. Leach Dr

The STEAM Journal

This piece is a concrete poem that both shows and describes the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus).

The Use And Development Of Mathematics Within Creative Literature, Toby S C Peres

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper presents a study on the extent to which creative literature been used as a vessel to carry forward the development of mathematical thought. The role of mathematics as a driving force for literature is highlighted, and while many examples exist that clearly show an attempt to disperse mathematical ideas, with Lewis Carroll, OuLiPo and ancient poetry considered, the argument that the sole purpose of the writings was for the sake of mathematical development is not clear-cut.

Grieving Climate Change: A Psychological And Personal Exploration Of Emotionally Processing The Climate Crisis, Hava Chishti

Pitzer Senior Theses

The psychological concept of grief, although not typically associated with climate change, has strong applications to the emotional processing of climate change for human beings. Grief can be related to climate change in many ways, including the grief that individuals may feel over the anticipated loss of their future, losses that may be experienced due to climate-related disasters, and grief for the overall implications of anthropogenic climate change. A mixture of traditional literature analysis and creative nonfiction essays, which focus on personal narratives from interviews and the author’s experience, are used to outline the ways in which the psychology of …

Timber Island: A Screenplay, Lucas Cunningham

Pomona Senior Theses

A screenplay about the legacy of land use in the Pacific Northwest:

A family from old timber money looking to sell their expansive Pacific Northwest island estate. Two Parks Service surveyors, a Native American scientist, and a developer competing for the bid. A forest with its own agenda.

Against a backdrop of cedar trees and saltwater, tensions boil, ideologies clash, and buried secrets bubble to the surface.

Who will walk away with the deed to Timber Island? And what will it cost?

Moving In The Underground: The Politics Of Black Joy In Roller-Skating And Funk Music In Chicago, John West

Pomona Senior Theses

Skating provides a moment of limited protection from the dangers of being Black in the after-life of slavery. Skating provides a way to temporarily escape the pain of the outside that is depicted above. The pain of a modern post-racial colorblind slave society. A society plagued with hyper-surveillance, mass incarceration, and domestic militarism targeted at Black and Brown bodies. Our joy and pleasure are what sustain us. We turn to jubilee to offer a moment of freedom from the burden of racial capitalism. Subversive Black joy, the joy that allows Black folk to restore, recreate, and reinvent themselves is how …

My Backyard Garden, Hezekiah Smithstein

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis follows my attempts to create a new relationship with the land outside my house, through transforming my weed-choked backyard into a native plant garden. Through styles of memoir, essay, and literary journalism, I examine what it means to take care of the outdoor home, as a human family part of an urban ecosystem. This project explores ideas surrounding people and plants, the effects on a space of actions and interactions both past and present, and brings into conversation different ideas and philosophies from homeowner to ecologist, city park to indigenous author, that shape the way we think and …

“My Purpose Is To Assist”: How Chatgpt Can Push Liberal Arts Institutions To Think Critically About Themselves, Clare B. Martin

Scripps Senior Theses

Since its release, ChatGPT, a chatbot specialized in writing content and answering questions in response to user prompts, has posed an unclear threat to liberal arts institutions. Can it serve as an effective tool for cheating? Can its responses replace work done in the liberal arts? This thesis argues that ChatGPT’s limitations—particularly its inability to think critically—prevent it from replacing real liberal arts work, which involves questioning, critique, and re-examination. If anything, this thesis suggests, ChatGPT can push liberal arts institutions to better promote critical thinking by serving as a litmus test for liberal arts-level work.

The Ways I'M A Fraud: Essays On Imposter Syndrome In Identity, Jack Friedman

Pitzer Senior Theses

In this day and age, great progress is being made in acceptance of all kinds of "alternative identities." With growing numbers of identities, imposter syndrome about identity rises with people feeling as though they don't fully belong to an identity group. What does it even mean to be a member of an identity group, and why do I, and many others, feel like an imposter in them? I offer two essays discussing the matter. The first covers alcoholism and how not committing fully to sobriety feels like it excludes my using the identity of alcoholic or addict. The other on …

How To Rebuild Home: Lessons From Loss, Amelie Lee

Scripps Senior Theses

“How to Rebuild Home: Lessons from Loss” is a memoir that tells the story of my loss of my mother to cancer the summer before my senior year of college. In the piece, I utilize epistolary and creative nonfiction styles to grapple with what it means to grieve a mother both before and after she’s gone and what a daughter’s duty is to her parents in a Chinese American family. Through letters to my eighteen-year-old self and memoir-style storytelling, I've tried to create a coming-of-age story that dives into an emotional and nuanced relationship with family, love, and grief.

What Lies Beneath, Eleanor Harrison

Scripps Senior Theses

In What Lies Beneath, I explore legacy, family dynamics, and the nature of exploration.

Picture Me Like This: A Short Story Collection, Anna Jones

Scripps Senior Theses

Picture Me Like This is a short story collection that explores our racialized imaginations surrounding Blackness and whiteness, and the implications those have for our intimacies with each other.

Of Monsters And Men: Deconstructing Patriarchal Relationships While Redefining "Family" In Seville, Annika Johnson

Scripps Senior Theses

After growing up with an abusive, alcoholic, narcissist for a father, I did not realize how abnormal my perception of family was until I studied abroad in Spain at age 19. The healthy family dynamics of my hosts–a Sevillan family of five who mirrored the structure of my childhood family unit of Mom, Dad, my sister, brother, and me–challenged my notion of home as a place of survival and of paternal figures as monsters. This experience led me to the questions: Do patriarchal societies inherently create monsters that we have to face or are the monsters the exception? How do …

Guidebook On Making A House A Home, Alana Stallings

Scripps Senior Theses

This is a collection of poems by Alana Stallings that translates emotional trauma into fictional landscape and character. Both of these operate within the energetic structure of a home, at once pushing against and obeying this enforced confinement. Within that tension, Stallings explores questions of family, selfhood, belonging, displacement, and cycles.

La Floresta; An Appreciation And Reimagination Of My Barrio, Ana Rodríguez

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a love letter to my barrio, La Floresta in Quito, Ecuador. I have divided it into three different sections: a creative writing piece where I walk readers through my barrio and my life in it, a historical section where I analyze its history and the reasons for its uniqueness and current identity, and finally a project proposal for a community center called "Casa La Floresta".