Mathematics Commons^™

The Earth Mover's Distance Through The Lens Of Algebraic Combinatorics, William Quentin Erickson

Theses and Dissertations

The earth mover's distance (EMD) is a metric for comparing two histograms, with burgeoning applications in image retrieval, computer vision, optimal transport, physics, cosmology, political science, epidemiology, and many other fields. In this thesis, however, we approach the EMD from three distinct viewpoints in algebraic combinatorics. First, by regarding the EMD as the symmetric difference of two Young diagrams, we use combinatorial arguments to answer statistical questions about histogram pairs. Second, we adopt as a natural model for the EMD a certain infinite-dimensional module, known as the first Wallach representation of the Lie algebra su(p,q), which arises in the Howe …

Quantization For A Nonuniform Triadic Cantor Distribution, Asha Barua

Theses and Dissertations

The quantization scheme in probability theory deals with finding a best approximation of a given probability distribution by a probability distribution that is supported on finitely many points. Let P be a Borel probability measure on R such that P := 1/4 P◦ S1−1 + 1\2 P◦ S2−1 + 1/4 P◦ S3−1, where S1, S2 and S3 are three contractive similarity mappings such that Sj(x) = 1/5x+2(j−1)/5, for all x ∈ R. For this probability measure, in this thesis, we determine the optimal sets of n-means and the nth quantization errors for …

Mathematics Teachers’ Working With Cooperative Learning, Jaime Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

Teaching styles vary greatly amongst educators. One being extensively researched and highly discussed is the method of cooperative learning. Although many studies have shown the benefits of incorporating cooperative learning into classrooms, it has not been a widely used method of teaching in high school mathematics classrooms. This study explores some of the efforts that teachers, who utilize cooperative learning in their classrooms, make to implement cooperative learning lessons successfully. Furthermore, this study also explores the challenges these teachers have encountered when using cooperative learning. Data was collected qualitatively by interviews and surveys from six in-service high …

Thermal Convection In A Cylindrical Annulus Filled With Porous Material, Anirban Ray

Theses and Dissertations

Here a study on thermal convection in a porous vertical cylindrical annulus which is heated from below is carried out. The walls are considered to be impermeable that is the velocity is 0 at the boundary walls. The cylindrical annulus is radially insulated. The governing system consists of the continuity equation, Darcy-Boussinesq equation, heat equation and the equation of state. Employing weakly non-linear approach, the basic state system and the perturbed system are derived. After obtaining the solutions to the basic state system, the pressure term in perturbed system is eliminated by taking double curl, and then eliminating the velocity, …

Traveling Wave Solutions For The Negative Order Hierarchy Of The D-Akns Equations, Brayton Isaac Wario

Theses and Dissertations

In the thesis work, based on the D-AKNS spectral problem, we study the negative-order D-AKNS (ND-AKNS) hierarchy. In particular, the first ND-AKNS equation is derived from the negative-order D-AKNS hierarchy, which is proved integrable in the sense of Lax pair. Furthermore, we discuss the traveling wave solutions to the ND-AKNS Equation, including possible soliton solutions.

Poset Ramsey Numbers For Boolean Lattices, Joshua Cain Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

For each positive integer n, let Qn denote the Boolean lattice of dimension n. For posets P, P', define the poset Ramsey number R(P,P') to be the least N such that for any red/blue coloring of the elements of Q_N, there exists either a subposet isomorphic to P with all elements red, or a subposet isomorphic to P' with all elements blue.

Axenovich and Walzer introduced this concept in Order (2017), where they proved R(Q₂, Q_n) ≤ 2n + 2 and R(Q …

Adjacency And Connectivity Matrices To Airline Connections Among Airports, Alejandra Munoz

Theses and Dissertations

We study how powers of adjacency and connectivity matrices can be used to investigate airline connections among airports. For this study, only matrices with all diagonal elements of “0” are considered (i.e., an airport is not connected to itself) and each matrix must contain at least one entry of “1” in each row and column (i.e., each airport contains at least one inbound and one outbound route). Sets of 3, 4, and 5 airports are discussed in this study, comparing cases with up to 3, 4, and 5 round routes, respectively, in an effort to find the amount of paths …

Structure Preserving Reduced-Order Models Of Hamiltonian Systems, Megan Alice Mckay

Theses and Dissertations

Large-scale dynamical systems are expensive to simulate due to the computational cost accrued y the substantial number of degrees of freedom. To accelerate repeated numerical simulations of the systems, proper orthogonal decomposition reduced order models (POD-ROMs) have been developed. When applied to Hamiltonian systems, however, special care must be taken when performing the reduced order modeling to keep their energy-preserving nature. This work presents a survey of several structure-preserving reduced order models (SP-ROMs). In addition, this work employs the discrete empirical interpolation method (DEIM) and develops an SP-DEIM model for nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. The wave equation is considered as a …

The Mathematical Foundation Of The Musical Scales And Overtones, Michaela Dubose-Schmitt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the question of mathematical involvement in music, a topic long discussed going all the way back to Plato. It details the mathematical construction of the three main tuning systems (Pythagorean, just intonation, and equal temperament), the methods by which they were built and the mathematics that drives them through the lens of a historical perspective. It also briefly touches on the philosophical aspects of the tuning systems and whether their differences affect listeners. It further details the invention of the Fourier Series and their relation to the sound wave to explain the concept of overtones within the …

Spline Modeling And Localized Mutual Information Monitoring Of Pairwise Associations In Animal Movement, Andrew Benjamin Whetten

Theses and Dissertations

to a new era of remote sensing and geospatial analysis. In environmental science and conservation ecology, biotelemetric data recorded is often high-dimensional, spatially and/or temporally, and functional in nature, meaning that there is an underlying continuity to the biological process of interest. GPS-tracking of animal movement is commonly characterized by irregular time-recording of animal position, and the movement relationships between animals are prone to sudden change. In this dissertation, I propose a spline modeling approach for exploring interactions and time-dependent correlation between the movement of apex predators exhibiting territorial and territory-sharing behavior. A measure of localized mutual information (LMI) is …

A Study Of Machine Learning Techniques For Dynamical System Prediction, Rishi Pawar

Theses and Dissertations

Dynamical Systems are ubiquitous in mathematics and science and have been used to model many important application problems such as population dynamics, fluid flow, and control systems. However, some of them are challenging to construct from the traditional mathematical techniques. To combat such problems, various machine learning techniques exist that attempt to use collected data to form predictions that can approximate the dynamical system of interest. This thesis will study some basic machine learning techniques for predicting system dynamics from the data generated by test systems. In particular, the methods of Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics …

Design Optimal Health Insurance Policies From Multiple Perspectives, Lianlian Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

The majority of the literature about moral hazard focuses only on qualitative studies. If a health insurance plan imposes little copayment on the insured, the insured may be motivated to have more than necessary medical services, which would raise the insurer’s share of cost. This is referred to as moral hazard. Furthermore, the involvement of a third party–healthcare providers adds more complications on moral hazard. Healthcare providers and patients might choose to collaborate to benefit more from insurance reimbursement, which consequently result in unnecessary loss of the insurer. In this dissertation, we attempt to solve these issues and focus on …

Coarse Cohomology Of The Complement And Applications, Arka Banerjee

Theses and Dissertations

John Roe [15] introduced the notion of coarse cohomology of a metric space to studylarge scale geometry of the space. Coarse cohomology of a metric space roughly measures the way in which uniformly large bounded set in that space fit together. In the first part of this dissertation, we describe a joint work with Boris Okun that generalizes Roe’s theory to define coarse (co)homology of complement of any given subspace in a metric space. Inspired by the work of Kapovich and Kleiner [12], we introduce a notion of a manifold like object in the coarse category (called coarse PD(n) space) …

Robust Estimation Of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Parameters, Timon Sebastian Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

The standard estimators of the parameter of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process are vulnerable to contamination in the data sets. In this thesis more robust estimators for the parameter of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process are proposed which use medians instead of means. The scaling for these estimators is more complex and numerical methods must be used. A possible numerical implementation is described. The performance of the standard estimators and the proposed robust estimators are compared on data sets with different levels of contamination and different kind of errors. This thesis shows that the proposed robust estimators can be considerably better than the standard …

A Spatiotemporal Bayesian Model For Population Analysis, Mohamed Jaber

Theses and Dissertations

Spatiotemporal population analysis based on incomplete, redundant, and unidentified observations is critically important, yet it is a very challenging problem. Different approaches have been proposed and several methods have been implemented to address this problem. Capture-recapture methods have been widely used and have become the standard sampling and analytical framework for ecological statistics with applications to population analysis. Despite the fact that capture-recapture methods have been commonly used, these methods do not consider the spatial structure of the population. Moreover, conventional capturerecapture methods do not use any explicit spatial information with regard to the spatial nature of the sampling and …

Multiscale Optimization Via Multilevel Pca-Based Control Space Reduction In Applications To Electrical Impedance Tomography, Maria Minhee Felicia Monica Chun

Theses and Dissertations

A fully developed computational framework for the optimal reconstruction of binary-type images suitable for various models seen in biological and medical applications is developed and validated. This framework enables solutions to the inverse electrical impedance tomography (EIT) problems of cancer detection at different levels of complexity with multiple cancer-affected regions of different sizes based on available measurements usually affected by noise. A new spatial partitioning methodology and efficient scheme for switching between fine and coarse scales are developed to allow higher variations in the geometry of reconstructed binary images with superior performance confirmed computationally on various models. A nominal number …

On Approximating Solitary Wave Solutions For The Classical Euler Equations, Julio C. Paez

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, we use a method based on Hirota substitution or the Wronskian method to find approximate solitary wave solutions to the classical Euler equations. This method uses a small parameter lambda as the basis of approximation, a parameter derived from the form of prospective solutions we consider, rather than the standard small parameters alpha and beta. The L-infinity norm and asymptotic notation are used to measure the accuracy of the approximation rather than finding the error explicitly.

A Decomposition Formula For The Multi-Soliton Solutions To The 'Good' Boussinesq Equation, Aldo Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we relate multi-soliton waves generated by the 'good' Boussinesq equation to the distribution functions in the classical linear Schrödinger equation. The linear Schrödinger equation describes the distribution of a particle or particles in a particular environment. The Schrödinger equation is linear, the superposition principle of the solutions, especially the eigenfunctions is nonlinear and we will show that we may observe similar behavior in the solutions of the Boussinesq equations for soliton waves. The work extends the study of two-soliton solutions to the Boussinesq equation to the case of three-soliton solutions. …

Pentagonal Tilings Of The Plane, Ariana T. Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Tilings are mathematical objects that allow us to use geometry to visualize interaction between objects as well as to create artistic realization of mathematical objects in the plane and in the space.

We will focus on tilings of the plane that use only one type of convex pentagonal tile each, the pentagonal tilings. There are fifteen types of pentagonal tiles, with each containing their own set of restrictions. The main result of this thesis is an interactive realization of all fifteen types of pentagonal tiles using GeoGebra.

Modeling Functions Into An Angular Displacement Of An Elastic Pendulum, Brenda Lee Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we study the relation between analytic signals and a variety of pendulum systems. The representation of a signal as a pair of time varying amplitude and phase has been well studied and often related to linear mass spring systems. The differential equations describing pendulum systems are nonlinear and we provide analytical and numerical results regarding interpretation about the amplitude and the phase of signals in different pendulum settings. We report an explicit solution of the Elastic Pendulum problem in the case of linear phase. We develop an experimental procedure to piece-wise approximate bounded functions on a partition …

Iterated Rascal Triangles, Jena M. Gregory

Theses and Dissertations

We introduce a sequence of number triangles, {Ri} i=0 infty , such that the entries of each share a common generalized recurrence relation. R1 is the Rascal triangle and as i grows large, Ri becomes Pascal's triangle. For all i, we provide a combinatorial interpretation and find closed-term formulas for the entries of Ri . Our proofs rely on generating functions and other combinatorial arguments.

An Application Of Matrices To The Spread Of The Covid 19, Selena Suarez

Theses and Dissertations

We represented a restaurant seating arrangement using matrices by using 0 entry for someone without covid and 1 entry for someone with covid. Using the matrices we found the best seating arrangements to lessen the spread of covid. We also investigated if there was a factor needed to create a formula that could calculate the matrix that shows who would be affected with covid with each seating arrangement. However, there did not seem to be a clear pattern within the factors. Aside from covid applications, we also investigated the symmetries in seating arrangements and the possible combinations with these arrangements …

A Gpu Accelerated Genetic Algorithm For The Construction Of Hadamard Matrices, Raven I. Ruiz

Theses and Dissertations

Hadamard matrices are square matrices with +1 and -1 entries and with columns that are mutually orthogonal. The applications include signal processing and quantum computing. There are several methods for constructing Hadamard matrices of order 2k for every positive integer k. The Hadamard conjecture proposes that there are also Hadamard matrices of order 4k for every positive integer k. We use a genetic algorithm to construct (search for) Hadamard Matrices. The initial population of random matrices is generated to have a balanced number of +1 and -1 entries in each column. Several fitness functions are implemented exploiting …

Boundary Feedback Control Of The 3d Navier-Stokes Equations, Camille Renee Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

We present a boundary feedback stabilization of the parabolic steady state profile of the incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations in a three-dimensional channel flow. The decentralized, static boundary feedback control laws are derived using Lyapunov technique. While the theoretical results are limited to stability enhancement for small Reynolds numbers, extensive numerical simulations and visualizations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed feedback law even in cases when the uncontrolled flow is turbulent.

Some Properties And Applications Of Spaces Of Modular Forms With Eta-Multiplier, Cuyler Daniel Warnock

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers two topics. In the first part of the dissertation, we prove the existence of fourteen congruences for the $p$-core partition function of the form given by Garvan in \cite{G1}. Different from the congruences given by Garvan, each of the congruences we give yield infinitely many congruences of the form $$a_p(\ell\cdot p^{t+1} \cdot n + p^t \cdot k - \delta_p) \equiv 0 \pmod \ell.$$ For example, if $t \geq 0$ and $\sfrac{m}{n}$ is the Jacobi symbol, then we prove $$a_7(7^t \cdot n - 2) \equiv 0 \pmod 5, \text{ \ \ if $\bfrac{n}{5} = 1$ and $\bfrac{n}{7} = …

Covering Systems And The Minimum Modulus Problem, Maria Claire Cummings

Theses and Dissertations

A covering system or a covering is a set of linear congruences such that every integer satisfies at least one of these congruences. In 1950, Erdős posed a problem regarding the existence of a finite covering with distinct moduli and an arbitrarily large minimum modulus. This remained unanswered until 2015 when Robert Hough proved an explicit bound of 1016 for the minimum modulus of any such covering. In this thesis, we examine the use of covering systems in number theory results, expand upon the proof of the existence of an upper bound on the minimum modulus in the case of …

Tangled Up In Tanglegrams, Drew Joseph Scalzo

Theses and Dissertations

Tanglegrams are graphs consisting of two rooted binary plane trees with the same number of leaves and a perfect matching between the two leaf sets. A Tanglegram drawing is a special way of drawing a Tanglegram; and a Tanglegram is called planar if it has a drawing such that the matching edges do not cross. In this thesis, we will discuss various results related to the construction and planarity of Tanglegrams, as well as demonstrate how to construct all the Tanglegrams of size 4 by looking at two types of rooted binary trees - Caterpillar and Complete Binary Trees. After …

The Existence And Quantum Approximation Of Optimal Pure State Ensembles, Ryan Thomas Mcgaha

Theses and Dissertations

In this manuscript we study entanglement measures defined via the convex roof construction. In the first chapter we build the notion of an entanglement measure from the ground up and discuss various issues that arise when trying to measure the amount of entanglement present in an arbitrary density operator. Through this introduction we will motivate the use of the convex roof construction. In the second chapter we will show that the infimum in the convex roof construction is achieved for a specific set of entanglement measures and provide canonical examples of such measures. We also describe LOCC operations via a …

Results On Select Combinatorial Problems With An Extremal Nature, Stephen Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is split into three sections, each containing new results on a particular combinatorial problem. In the first section, we consider the set of 3-connected quadrangulations on n vertices and the set of 5-connected triangulations on n vertices. In each case, we find the minimum Wiener index of any graph in the given class, and identify graphs that obtain this minimum value. Moreover, we prove that these graphs are unique up to isomorphism.

In the second section, we work with structures emerging from the biological sciences called tanglegrams. In particular, our work pertains to an invariant of tanglegrams called …

Role Of Inhibition And Spiking Variability In Ortho- And Retronasal Olfactory Processing, Michelle F. Craft

Theses and Dissertations

Odor perception is the impetus for important animal behaviors, most pertinently for feeding, but also for mating and communication. There are two predominate modes of odor processing: odors pass through the front of nose (ortho) while inhaling and sniffing, or through the rear (retro) during exhalation and while eating and drinking. Despite the importance of olfaction for an animal’s well-being and specifically that ortho and retro naturally occur, it is unknown whether the modality (ortho versus retro) is transmitted to cortical brain regions, which could significantly instruct how odors are processed. Prior imaging studies show different …