Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Assessing Attitudes Towards Global Climate Change Among Utah State University Faculty, Amy C. Rohman

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Climate change is a polarizing issue in which there are significant differences in perception between the scientific community and the general public. The intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has formally acknowledged an increasing body of evidence that supports primarily human-caused climate change. No scientific organization has dissented, and over thirty national academies of the sciences have issued joint declarations confirming the evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, polarization is not caused by a lack of available scientific information. This study surveys Utah State University faculty to solicit their knowledge of and attitudes towards global climate change. Responses are assessed …

Tournament Directed Graphs, Sarah Camille Mousley

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Paired comparison is the process of comparing objects two at a time. A tournament in Graph Theory is a representation of such paired comparison data. Formally, an n-tournament is an oriented complete graph on n vertices; that is, it is the representation of a paired comparison, where the winner of the comparison between objects x and y (x and y are called vertices) is depicted with an arrow or arc from the winner to the other.

In this thesis, we shall prove several results on tournaments. In Chapter 2, we will prove that the maximum number of vertices …

Spock, Euler, And Madison: Graph Theory In The Classroom, Michael Buhler

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This work is an attempt to accomplish two main objectives. First is to encourage secondary students to engage in the kinds of mathematical reasoning skills that will be necessary to them when they move to college math classes. My experience in college, along with that of many others is that "school math," with its obsession with calculations and memorization, is dreadfully insufficient in preparing students for the proof and reasoning-based classes they will face in high school. This is an attempt to integrate some of those reasoning skills into high school courses using graph theory as a vehicle.

The second …

Curds And Whey: Little Miss Muffit's Contribution To Multivariate Linear Regression, John Cameron Kidd

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A common multivariate statistical problem is the prediction of two or more response variables using two or more predictor variables. The simplest model for this situation is the multivariate linear regression model. The standard least squares estimation for this model involves regressing each response variable separately on all the predictor variables. Breiman and Friedman [1] show how to take advantage of correlations among the response variables to increase the predictive accuracy for each of the response variable with an algorithm they call Curds and Whey. In this report, I describe an implementation of the Curds and Whey algorithm in …