Mathematics Commons^™

Defining Characteristics That Lead To Cost-Efficient Veteran Nba Free Agent Signings, David Mccain

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Throughout the history of the NBA, decisions regarding the signing of free agents have been riddled with complexity. Franchises are tasked with finding out what players will serve as optimal free agent signings prior to seeing them perform within the framework of their team. This study hypothesizes that the adequacy of an NBA free agent signing can be modeled and predicted through the implementation of a machine learning model. The model will learn the necessary information using training and testing data sets that include various player biometrics, game statistics, and financial information. The application of this machine learning model will …

El Final Report: Undergraduate Summer Research Internships, Sophie Wu

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

In her final report, Sophie Wu discusses her two Undergraduate Summer Research Internships at Western University: the first in the Statistics and Actuarial Science department, concerning microinsurance, and the second, in the Mathematics department, concerning computational neuroscience.

Changing Nfl Playoff Overtime Rules To Create Equal Opportunities To Win A Game, Matthew Silvia

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The NFL has attempted to create fair overtime rules over the course of the past decade; however, this study is interested in determining what playoff overtime rule (or rules) could the NFL implement to result in outcomes where both teams have a relatively equal chance of winning a game. This study aims to find which overtime rules work best at minimizing the differences between teams who possess the ball first versus teams that kick the ball off to start an overtime period. By collecting various NFL statistics from ESPN.com and FantasyOutsiders.com, this study hopes to run multiple simulations of different …

Contributions To The Teaching And Learning Of Fluid Mechanics, Ashwin Vaidya

Department of Mathematics Facuty Scholarship and Creative Works

This issue showcases a compilation of papers on fluid mechanics (FM) education, covering different sub topics of the subject. The success of the first volume [1] prompted us to consider another follow-up special issue on the topic, which has also been very successful in garnering an impressive variety of submissions. As a classical branch of science, the beauty and complexity of fluid dynamics cannot be overemphasized. This is an extremely well-studied subject which has now become a significant component of several major scientific disciplines ranging from aerospace engineering, astrophysics, atmospheric science (including climate modeling), biological and biomedical science …

We’Re Here To Get You There: A Statistical Analysis Of Bridgewater State University’S Transit System, Abigail Adams

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Bridgewater State University first established its on-campus transportation service in January of 1984. While it began only running as an on-campus service for students throughout the day, the service grew to expand by offering an off-campus connection to the neighboring city of Brockton and absorbed the night service system from the campus safety team. As BSU Transit continues to grow, the organization is seeking ways to improve their overall service and better prepare their fleet and driver pool to accommodate this growth. The purpose of this research is to analyze trends among the data collected by BSU Transit and assist …

Under The Influence, Leonardo Cavicchio

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The purpose of this Honors Capstone entitled Under the Influence is to assess the validity of claims concerning the possible influence of roommates on one another, concerning alcohol on college campuses. This will be done by examining data collected in a prior study conducted over a two-year period. This analysis will focus on how alcohol consumption changes in correlation with the personality factors of roommates over an extended period of time. This secondary analysis of de-identified data will focus on primary and secondary subquestions. The primary question that will be addressed with the data set collected from the University of …

The Value Of A Win: Analysis Of Playoff Structures, Matthew Orsi

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The purpose of this Senior Capstone project is to analyze the distinctions between existing playoff systems. In particular, we are looking to analyze the differences between the standard single-elimination tournament (which the NCAA has used since the inception of the tournament) and other potential options: double-elimination and multiple game series. Popular sports such as Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association all use multiple game series for their playoffs. This project will use probability theory and simulation to determine the likelihood of different seeds winning a championship as well as the expected number of victories by seed in each …

Application Of Inverse Problems In Imaging, Xiaoyue Luo

Post-Grant Reports

In this project, we studied how to enhance image quality by denoising and deblurring a given image mathematically. We compared some existing state-of-the-art methods for image denoising and deblurring. We implemented the algorithms numerically using Matlab.

We studied the possibility of combining statistical analysis with the traditional image restoration methods including using wavelets and framelets and we derived some encouraging preliminary results.

My research student Alleta Maier gave a sequence of talks on the project including the Pacific Northwest Mathematical Association of America conference at Oregon State University in April, 2016; Linfield College Taylor Series in March, 2016, and Linfield …

Does Academic Performance Predict Workplace Productivity?, Jodie-Gaye Hunter

Honors Projects in Economics

This research examines if college GPA affects productivity and compensation in the workplace. It uses data collected from a survey of approximately 23,000 Bryant University graduates in different stages of their career. About 10 percent of the alumni surveyed completed the survey. The econometric model used in this study allows estimating the effect of GPA on income after controlling for various demographic and socioeconomic variables, including education, major, occupation, gender, among others. The empirical work provides evidence that GPA has a positive and statistically significant impact on workplace productivity for females, but GPA seems to be a weaker predictor of …

Mathematical Modeling Of Trending Topics On Twitter, Jonathan S. Skaza

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Created in 2006, Twitter is an online social networking service in which users share and read 140-character messages called Tweets. The site has approximately 288 million monthly active users who produce about 500 million Tweets per day. This study applies dynamical and statistical modeling strategies to quantify the spread of information on Twitter. Parameter estimates for the rates of infection and recovery are obtained using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The methodological strategy employed is an extension of techniques traditionally used in an epidemiological and biomedical context (particularly in the spread of infectious disease). This study, which addresses …

Undergraduate And Graduate Teaching Assistants' Perceptions Of Their Responsibilities - Factors That Help Or Hinder, Alena Moon, Hyunyi Jung, Farshid Marbouti, Kelsey Joy Rodgers, Heidi A. Diefes-Dux

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Effective teaching assistants (TAs) are crucial for effective student learning. This is especially true in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, where TAs are enabling large programs to transition to more student-centered learning environments. To ensure that TAs are able to support these types of learning environments, their perspectives of training, their abilities, and other work related aspects must be understood. In this paper a survey that was created based on interviews conducted with eight TAs is discussed. The survey has four primary categories of content that are critical for understanding TAs' perspectives: (1) background, (2) motivation, (3) training, …

A Study Of Women Working In The Actuarial Field, Jillian Emberg

Honors Projects in Mathematics

The goal of this project is to examine how women fit into the actuarial career path and how cultural expectations, biological factors, and personal aspirations affect their experiences in the field. Dramatic changes in the profession have occurred since its emergence in the nineteenth century to become more welcoming to women who choose to enter the profession. However, despite the equalizing demographic shifts of the field, it is still a male-dominated profession. This paper attempts to analyze why some of the changes in the demographics of the field have occurred as well as explain what factors contribute to women’s underrepresentation …

Mathematical Analysis Of The Problems Faced By The People With Disabilities (Pwds), Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, A. Praveen Prakash

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The authors in this book have analyzed the socio-economic and psychological problems faced by People with Disabilities (PWDs) and their families. The study was made by collecting data using both fuzzy linguistic questionnaire / by interviews in case they are not literates from 2,15,811 lakhs people. This data was collected using the five Non Government Organizations (NGOs) from northern Tamil Nadu. Now any reader would be interested to know whether the Tamils (natives of Tamil Nadu) had ever spoken about people with disability. Even before 2000 years tamils had heroic poetry Purananuru (28th poem) about the war fare methods. In …

A New Undergraduate Curriculum On Mathematical Biology At University Of Dayton, Muhammad Usman, Amit Singh

Mathematics Faculty Publications

The beginning of modern science is marked by efforts of pioneers to understand the natural world using a quantitative approach. As Galileo wrote, "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". The traditional undergraduate course curriculum is heavily focused on individual disciplines like biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics rather than interdisciplinary courses. This fragmented teaching of sciences in majority of universities leave biology outside the quantitative and mathematical approaches. The landscape of biomedical science has transformed dramatically with advances in high throughput experimental approaches, which led to the huge amount of data. The best possible approach to generate …

Determining The Success Of Ncaa Basketball Teams Through Team Characteristics, Raymond Witkos

Honors Projects in Mathematics

Every year much of the nation becomes engulfed in the NCAA basketball postseason tournament more affectionately known as “March Madness.” The tournament has received the name because of the ability for any team to win a single game and advance to the next round. The purpose of this study is to determine whether concrete statistical measures can be used to predict the final outcome of the tournament. The data collected in the study include 13 independent variables ranging from the 2003-2004 season up until the current 2009-2010 season. Different tests were run in an attempt to achieve the most accurate …

The Effects Of The Use Of Technology In Mathematics Instruction On Student Achievement, Ron Y. Myers

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the use of technology on students’ mathematics achievement, particularly the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) mathematics results. Eleven schools within the Miami-Dade County Public School System participated in a pilot program on the use of Geometers Sketchpad (GSP). Three of these schools were randomly selected for this study. Each school sent a teacher to a summer in-service training program on how to use GSP to teach geometry. In each school, the GSP class and a traditional geometry class taught by the same teacher were the study participants. Students’ mathematics …

Discovering Properties Of Complex Numbers By Starting With Known Properties Of Real Numbers, Esther D. Hatch

Honors College

No abstract provided.

Proceedings Of The First International Conference On Neutrosophy, Neutrosophic Logic, Neutrosophic Set, Neutrosophic Probability And Statistics, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In 1960s Abraham Robinson has developed the non-standard analysis, a formalization of analysis and a branch of mathematical logic, that rigorously defines the infinitesimals. Informally, an infinitesimal is an infinitely small number. Formally, x is said to be infinitesimal if and only if for all positive integers n one has xxx < 1/n. Let &>0 be a such infinitesimal number. The hyper-real number set is an extension of the real number set, which includes classes of infinite numbers and classes of infinitesimal numbers. Let’s consider the non-standard finite numbers 1+ = 1+&, where “1” is its standard part and “&” its non-standard part, …