Digital Commons Network^™

Appropriating The Discourse Of Language In Mathematics Education, Donna Kotsopoulos

Digitized Theses

This study explores language development in a grade 9 mathematics classroom to investigate: (a) whether mathematics has a distinct language register which is suitable for an applied linguistics interpretation, (b) how students’ appropriation of language impacts on their learning, and (c) the pedagogical implications of explicit instruction in a mathematical register. The findings suggest that a distinct Mathematics Language Register (MLR) exists, as do differences between how educators and students appropriate this register. Furthermore, ignoring these differences constrains students’ learning. Mathematics education, taken as a linguistics paradigm, requires a re-conceptualization of educator roles as students require explicit instruction in MLR. …

Technology And Mathematics Standards: An Integrated Approach, Chris Merrill, Mark Comerford

Publications

The article focuses on the use of standards-based teaching and learning that has been gaining significant attention in the education world. State and national associations now base their specific subject area or discipline solely on standards, i.e., International Technology Education Association (ITEA), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), National Science Education Association (NSEA). Moreover, at the public school level, state boards of education are holding school districts accountable for teaching standards-based curricula. It is with the latter definition in mind that the authors created a standards-based, integrated technology and mathematics lesson using the design and construction of stair systems.

Free Products Of Operator Spaces And Free Markov Processes, Mingchu Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

Certain (reduced) free product is introduced in the framework of operator spaces. Under the construction, the free product of preduals of von Neumann algebras agrees with the predual of the free product of von Neumann algebras. This answers a question asked by Effros affirmatively. An example is presented to show that the C*-algebra reduced free product of two C*-algebras may be contractively isomorphic to a proper subspace of the operator space reduced free product of the two C*-algebras.

Free Markov processes are also investigated in Voiculescu's free probability theory. This highly non-commutative notion generalizes that of free Brownian motion and …

Perceptions Of Eighth-Grade Mathematics Teachers Of The Impact Of The Maine Educational Assessment On Instructional Practices, Mary Christine Runge

Doctoral Dissertations

The purposes of this study are (a) to examine the perceptions of eighth grade mathematics teachers in the state of Maine concerning their classroom instructional and assessment practices and the influence on their students' scores in the MEA tests and (b) to determine if there is a relationship between community social/economic levels and student achievement on the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) mathematics tests. The survey instrument consisting of a mailed questionnaire designed for this study contained 86 Likert scale items that measured teachers' beliefs regarding the following resource 1 indicators: awareness and use of MEA resources, content area knowledge, instructional …

Spectral Interpretation Of Zeros Of Zeta Functions, Tamas Waldhauser

Doctoral Dissertations

For every algebraic number field we construct an operator on a separable Hilbert space, whose eigenvalues are exactly the critical zeros of the Dedekind zeta function of the number field.

The Interplay Between Instructional Policy And Its Constituents: How Mathematics Teachers Interact With And Understand "Principles And Standards For School Mathematics", Dawn M. Berk

Doctoral Dissertations

Educational policies aimed at reforming school mathematics education have been disseminated at an increasing rate in recent years. The impact of such policies hinges on if and how constituents decide to implement the policy recommendations, and these decisions depend largely on constituents' interpretations of the policy. Investigating how classroom teachers make sense of policy recommendations is particularly important, for teachers are the ones who ultimately decide what mathematics students learn, and how they learn it. This research followed a group of teachers as they studied a particular instructional policy, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000). Fourteen middle school …

A Quantitative Methodology For Determining The Need For Exposure-Prompted Medical Monitoring, Christopher P. Guzelian, Bruce E. Hillner, Philip S. Guzelian

Indiana Law Journal

Some toxic exposures to drugs or other environmental chemicals may create an increased risk of future disease for which periodic preventive medical screening might be desirable. However, many of these risks, even if unacceptable as a matter of public health policy, might still not be significant enough for medical monitoring (periodic diagnostic screening for latent illnesses or medical conditions) to be an appropriate medical intervention. This somewhat unintuitive, but statistically certain, conclusion can be demonstrated in relatively simple mathematical terms. Accordingly, we introduce Bayes's Rule and decision analysis, a quantitative methodology commonly employed by medical practitioners. A review of current …

Tree-Like Continua And 2-To-1 Maps, Jo Heath, Van C. Nall

Department of Math & Statistics Faculty Publications

It is not known if there is a 2-to-1 map from a continuum onto a tree-like continuum. In fact, it is not known if there is a 2-to-1 map onto a hereditarily decomposable tree-like continuum. We show that the domain of such a map would have to contain an indecomposable continuum.

The Effect Of The Math Concepts And Skills (Mcs) Computer Program On S, Cheryl Manning

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study measures the effectiveness of the National Computer Systems (NCS) Learn SuccessMaker Math Concepts and Skills computer program on standardized test scores at a middle school in east central Florida. The NCS Learn Company makes three claims for the SuccessMaker interactive computer program, Math Concepts and Skills (MCS): 1. Student Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores will improve from using the software 30 hours or more; 2. The increase in FCAT scores is directly related to the length of time the students' spend using the program; 3. The software package grading system is equivalent to the FCAT scoring. This …

Beyond Written Computation, Alistair Mcintosh, Len Sparrow

Research outputs pre 2011

This collection of papers based on research into aspects of number is a result of a writing conference held on Rottnest Island, near Perth, Western Australia. The concept of the conference emanated from Alistair Mcintosh and Len Sparrow and was based on two similar meetings organised by Cal Irons and Bob Reys.

All papers in this book were discussed at the Rottnest conference and subsequent changes were made by the authors based on comments and recommendations from the peer group who attended the conference.

The Impact Of The Utilization Of Connected Mathematics Project With Direct Instruction On Grade 8 Mathematics Map Scores, Kelly Helmick

Theses

Unavailable.

The Effect Of Money As A Context On Students' Mental Computation Performance In Years 3, 5, 7 And 9, Anne Paterson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The purpose of this study was to research the effect of money as a context on school students’ mental computational performance and strategy choices across a range of ages. This study adds to existing research, which has compared students' mental computational methods with their written methods, by the provision of the single common context of money. The content topics of whole and other rational numbers (simple fractions, decimals, and some percentages) were covered. Forty-eight primary school students plus sixteen secondary school students were involved in this study, with equal numbers of both genders from the two primary schools and one …

The Importance Of Fluent Component Skills In Mathematical Comprehension, Chisato Komatsu

LSU Master's Theses

The primary question to be addressed by the present study was whether fluency on component skills is important in the development of overall competency in mathematics. Reading fluency has served as an excellent predictor of one’s reading comprehension. However, few studies have investigated whether the fluency on component skills is essential in the development of overall competency in mathematics. In fact, there has been a push for instructional strategies to deemphasize the importance component skills. In the current study, 140 students in second- through fourth- grade classrooms from general education participated. Each student took three curriculum-based measurement probes (a single-skill …

Generalized Nowhere Zero Flow, Jingjing Chen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Let G be an undirected graph, A be an (additive) abelian group and A* = A - {lcub}0{rcub}. A graph G is A-connected if G has an orientation D(G) such that for every function b : V(G ) A satisfying Sv∈VG b(v) = 0, there is a function f : E(G) A* such that at each vertex v ∈ V(G), ∂f(v), the net flow out from v, equals b( v). An A-nowhere-zero-flow (abbreviated as A-NZF) in G is a function f : E(G) A* such that at each vertex v ∈ V(G), ∂f(v) = 0.;In this paper, we investigate the …

Objectivity, Information, And Maxwell's Demon, Steven Weinstein

Dartmouth Scholarship

This paper examines some common measures of complexity, structure, and information, with an eye toward understanding the extent to which complexity or information‐content may be regarded as objective properties of individual objects. A form of contextual objectivity is proposed which renders the measures objective, and which largely resolves the puzzle of Maxwell's Demon.

A Three-Level Finite Difference Scheme For Solving A Dual-Phase-Lagging Heat Transport Equation In Spherical Coordinates, Lixin Shen

Doctoral Dissertations

Heat transport through thin films or micro-objects is of vital importance in microtechnology applications. For instance, metal thin films are important components of microelectronic devices. The reduction of the device size to microscale has the advantage of enhancing the switching speed of the device. On the other hand, size reduction increases the rate of heat generation, which leads to a high thermal load on the microelectronic devices. Heat transfer at the microscale is also important for the thermal possessing of materials with a pulsed-laser. Examples in metal processing are laser micromachining, laser patterning, laser processing of diamond films from carbon …

Lawrence University Mathematician Receives National Writing Award, Lawrence University

Press Releases

Lawrence University assistant professor of mathematics Eugenie Hunsicker received the Mathematical Association of America’s Trevor Evans Award at the organization’s recent Summer Mathfest in Boulder, Colo.

The award, established in 1992, recognizes authors of “exceptional articles that are accessible to undergraduates” and published in the association’s journal Math Horizons. The award includes a citation and a $500 cash prize.

Hunsicker was honored for the article, “Simplicity is not Simple,” which she co wrote with Laura Taalman of James Madison University. The article, published in the September 2002 edition of Math Horizons, examines the simple mathematics behind modular architecture — from …

The Influence Of Teachers' Efficacy And Beliefs On Mathematics Instruction In The Early Childhood Classroom., Elizabeth Todd Brown 1948-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation was a correlational study conducted with a population of pre-k educators from a large Midwestern, metropolitan school district. The purpose was to examine if relations existed among early childhood teachers' sense of self efficacy, their beliefs about the importance of mathematics and teachers' mathematics instructional practices. There is strong reason to believe that teachers' mathematics beliefs and conceptions about the subject matter and its teaching play a vital role in their effectiveness as mediators between the subject and the learner. Examining teachers' efficacy and beliefs can inform educational practice and differentiate between successful and less successful instructional practices …

Eulerian Subgraphs And Hamiltonicity Of Claw -Free Graphs, Mingquan Zhan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Let C(l, k) denote the class of 2-edge-connected graphs of order n such that a graph G ∈ C(l, k) if and only if for every edge cut S ⊆ E(G) with |S| ≤ 3, each component of G - S has order at least n-kl . We prove that If G ∈ C(6, 0), then G is supereulerian if and only if G cannot be contracted to K2,3, K 2,5 or K2,3(e), where e ∈ E(K2,3) and K2,3(e) stands for a graph obtained from K2,3 by replacing e by a path of length 2. Previous results by Catlin and …

Fast Wavelet Collocation Methods For Second Kind Integral Equations On Polygons, Yi Wang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this thesis we develop fast wavelet collocation methods for integral equations of the second kind with weakly singular kernels over polygons . For this purpose, we construct multiscale wavelet functions and collocation functionals having vanishing moments. Moreover, we propose several truncation strategies, which lead to fast algorithms, for the coefficient matrix of the corresponding discrete system. Critical issues for numerical implementation of such methods are considered, such as choices of practical truncation strategies, numerical integration of weakly singular integrals, error controls of numerical quadrature and numerical solutions of resulting compressed linear systems. Numerical experiments are given to demonstrate proposed …

Abstracts Of Papers, 81st Annual Meeting Of The Virginia Academy Of Science, May 27-30, 2003, University Of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of papers that were presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 27-30, 2003.

Combinatorial Techniques For Digital Image Charecterization And Retrieval:Algorithms,Architectures,And Applications., Arijit Bishnu Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Interest in digital images stems mostly from its application to various areas of computer vision [33, 57] and pattern recognition [145). Problems include robotic vision and con- trol, geographic and topographic map matching, target recognition, space applications, character recognition, scene analysis, fingerprint and face recognition, etc. Lately, with the advent of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) and proliferation of the Internet, digital imaging applications are in vogue now than ever before. In almost all the cases, the data size is enormously large, and at the same time, fast on-line as well as real- time computation is needed. For example, in fingerprint …

A Comparison Of Students' Anxiety Levels While Taking Computer Versus Paper And Pencil Timed Math Tests, Angela S. Jungerman

McCabe Thesis Collection

The purpose of this research is to compare and contrast the anxiety levels of students before and after taking the computerized timed math test with the levels before and after taking the paper-and-pencil timed math test. Two second-grade classes were used in this research with each student taking each test once. The computer test, found at www .saxonpublishers.com/activities/basic fact_ sheets/, consisted of 50 addition questions to be completed in 30 seconds, and the paper-and-pencil version, adapted by the researcher from a Saxon created test, consisted of 100 addition questions to be completed in 60 seconds. The students' blood pressures and …

Σary, Minnesota State University Moorhead, Mathematics Department

Math Department Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Will Standards-Based Instruction Improve Student Achievement In The Areas Of Mathematics?, Robert E. Cowell

Theses

The author conducted this longitudinal study to gain an objective view of the instructional practices on student achievement. The author, an elementary principal, facilitated a change in philosophy and practice, especially in the area of mathematics.

This study confirmed that there is a statistically significant impact on student achievement when a standards-based instructional program is implemented. The data in the study also indicated that a significant number of students improved their achievement score based on CTB-McGraw Hill Terra Nova Assessments.

This study also indicated a significant demographic factor that will need to be further researched. Fifty percent of the students …

Modeling And Controls For A Laser Glass Cutting Machine Workcell Robot, Asif Mushtaq Mohammad

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm)-Type Nimbl loader junior robot includes a four-degree of freedom robot manipulator arm. This thesis deals with three main areas of robot behavior: kinematics, dynamics and controls for the purpose of improving the performance of the Laser Glass Cutting Machine (LGCM) workcell. The thesis deals with developing kinematic and dynamic models of this robot arm and their application to task planning of this robot.;Task planning is done for SCARA-Type Nimbl loader robot, in which the robot starts from pick position to place position. A 4-3-4 joint trajectory was generated for pick-to-place path for the …

Feedback Control Of Wave Propagation Patterns In Excitable Media, Florin Chirila

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Numerical and theoretical studies of the excitability boundaries for spiral waves in 2D and scroll waves in 3D are presented. The boundaries are defined by unstable wave segments, which are stabilized by using a negative feedback control algorithm. A kinematic description of the constant-size, constant-shape wave segments is presented for 2D waves. Intricate patterns of wave propagation are exhibited in a chemical reaction-diffusion system with spatiotemporal feedback. Wave behavior is controlled by feedback-regulated excitability gradients that guide propagation in specified directions. Waves reflecting or refracting are observed when interacting with a discontinuity in excitability. Wave trajectories in fixed excitability gradients …

Mathematics Discipline Assessment Report 2002/2003, Mathematics Discipline

Assessment of Student Learning Reports

No abstract provided.

On The Approximability Of Linear Ordering And Related Np-Optimization Problems., Sounaka Mishra Dr.

Doctoral Theses

We investigate approximability of both maximum and minimum linear ordering problems (MAX-LOP and MIN-LOP) and several related problems such as the well known feedback set problems, acyclie subdigraph problem and several others and their variants.We show that both MAX-LOP and MIN-LOP are strongly NP-complete, and MIN- LOP, MIN-QAP(S) (a special case of minimum quadratic assignment problem) and MIN-W-FAS are equivalent with respect to strict-reduction. The strict-equivalence is also established among these problems as well as MIN-W-FVS, with weights on arcs/vertices bounded by a polynomial, and the unweighted versions of the feedback set. problems. We also show that MAX-LOP is strict-equivalent …

Deformation Theory Of Dialgebras., Anita Majumdar Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The main objective of this thesis is to develop an algebraic deformation theury for associative dialgebras, which are binary quadratic algebras discovered by J.-L. Loday in (16). (17), and subisequently, to derive a G-algebra siructure ou the dialgebra colhomology with cocfticients in itself.Deformation theory dates back at Ieast to Riemann's 1837 memoir on alelian fianetions in which he studied IHanifolds of complex dimension one and calculated the mumber of parameters (called moduli) upon which a deformation depends. The modern theory of deformations of structures on manifolds was developed extensively ly Frolicher-Kodaira-Nijenhnis-Nirenberg-Spencer (13], [14], [15). [25|, [26).The study of deformations of …