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Full-Text Articles in Mathematics

The "Benfordness" Of Bach Music, Chadrack Bantange, Darby Burgett, Luke Haws, Sybil Prince Nelson Aug 2023

The "Benfordness" Of Bach Music, Chadrack Bantange, Darby Burgett, Luke Haws, Sybil Prince Nelson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper we analyze the distribution of musical note frequencies in Hertz to see whether they follow the logarithmic Benford distribution. Our results show that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christian Bach is Benford distributed while the computer-generated music is not. We also find that computer-generated music is statistically less Benford distributed than human- composed music.


Math And Democracy, Kimberly A. Roth, Erika L. Ward Aug 2023

Math And Democracy, Kimberly A. Roth, Erika L. Ward

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Math and Democracy is a math class containing topics such as voting theory, weighted voting, apportionment, and gerrymandering. It was first designed by Erika Ward for math master’s students, mostly educators, but then adapted separately by both Erika Ward and Kim Roth for a general audience of undergraduates. The course contains materials that can be explored in mathematics classes from those for non-majors through graduate students. As such, it serves students from all majors and allows for discussion of fairness, racial justice, and politics while exploring mathematics that non-major students might not otherwise encounter. This article serves as a guide …


Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis Of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory, D'Andre Adams, Daniela Beckelhymer, Alison Marr Jul 2019

Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis Of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory, D'Andre Adams, Daniela Beckelhymer, Alison Marr

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

"BEWARE and WARNING! This book is different from other books. You and YOU ALONE are in charge of what happens in this story." This is the captivating introduction to every book in the interactive novel series, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA). Our project uses the mathematical field of graph theory to analyze forty books from the CYOA book series for ages 9-12. We first began by drawing the digraphs of each book. Then we analyzed these digraphs by collecting structural data such as longest path length (i.e. longest story length) and number of vertices with outdegree zero (i.e. number …


Predicting The Next Us President By Simulating The Electoral College, Boyan Kostadinov Jan 2018

Predicting The Next Us President By Simulating The Electoral College, Boyan Kostadinov

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

We develop a simulation model for predicting the outcome of the US Presidential election based on simulating the distribution of the Electoral College. The simulation model has two parts: (a) estimating the probabilities for a given candidate to win each state and DC, based on state polls, and (b) estimating the probability that a given candidate will win at least 270 electoral votes, and thus win the White House. All simulations are coded using the high-level, open-source programming language R. One of the goals of this paper is to promote computational thinking in any STEM field by illustrating how probabilistic …


Teaching The Quandary Of Statistical Jurisprudence: A Review-Essay On Math On Trial By Schneps And Colmez, Noah Giansiracusa Jul 2016

Teaching The Quandary Of Statistical Jurisprudence: A Review-Essay On Math On Trial By Schneps And Colmez, Noah Giansiracusa

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review-essay on the mother-and-daughter collaboration Math on Trial stems from my recent experience using this book as the basis for a college freshman seminar on the interactions between math and law. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this book as an accessible introduction to this enigmatic yet deeply important topic. For those considering teaching from this text (a highly recommended endeavor) I offer some curricular suggestions.