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Claremont Colleges

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Beauty Of Life In Dynamical Systems: Philosophical Musings And Resources For Students, Soumya Banerjee, Joyeeta Ghose, Tarakeswar Banerjee, Kalyani Banerjee Aug 2023

Beauty Of Life In Dynamical Systems: Philosophical Musings And Resources For Students, Soumya Banerjee, Joyeeta Ghose, Tarakeswar Banerjee, Kalyani Banerjee

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Information plays a key role in life and in complex biological systems, and dynamical systems underlie and can be used to represent many complex systems. Indeed, dynamical systems and information processing capabilities may be the hallmarks of life-like systems. In this paper we combine dynamical systems with a computational framework to generate art. The framework can be used to generate aesthetically appealing forms of life-like systems. Our work suggests that we may need an ``aesthetic sense'' to recognize life that we have not seen before. We also provide teaching resources for students in schools and undergraduate institutions.

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Natural By Design, Craig Steele Jul 2020

Natural By Design, Craig Steele

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

I’m a professor in the Department of Biology and Health Sciences at Edinboro University, in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, a small, comprehensive liberal arts institution within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. My major teaching duties involve environmental biology, zoology, and ichthyology. I emphasize to my students how mathematics underlies the natural world of plants and animals, pointing out to them how many of “our” most amazing engineering and constructional achievements are copied from nature (from geodesic domes to the fusiform bows of modern commercial ships), as well as how plant and animal physiology and animal behavior (of individuals and of …

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Third Voices Conference On Teaching Stem With Music, September 22-23, 2019, Lawrence M. Lesser Jul 2019

Third Voices Conference On Teaching Stem With Music, September 22-23, 2019, Lawrence M. Lesser

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The third annual VOICES (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song; https://www.causeweb.org/voices/) conference will be held online September 22-23, 2019. Chaired by Tiffany Getty, this conference will explore the use of song to teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at the postsecondary (or secondary) level.

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Applied Scientific Demiurgy I – Entrance Examination Information Sheet, Mario Daniel Martín Jul 2019

Applied Scientific Demiurgy I – Entrance Examination Information Sheet, Mario Daniel Martín

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This document provides all the required information needed by aspiring demiurges to sit the entrance examination for the foundation course Applied Scientific Demiurgy I in the scientific stream of the Bachelor of Applied Demiurgy at the Topological Hyper-university of Technological Cosmology.

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Differential Equations Of Love And Love Of Differential Equations, Isaac Elishakoff Jul 2019

Differential Equations Of Love And Love Of Differential Equations, Isaac Elishakoff

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper, simple ordinary differential equations are discussed against the background of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In addition, a version of this relationship in a somewhat opposite setting is considered. It is proposed that engineering mathematics courses include this topic in order to promote additional interest in differential equations. In the final section it is shown that vibration of a single-degree-of-freedom mechanical system can be cast as a love-hate relationship between its displacement and velocity, and dynamic instability identified as a transition from trigonometric love to hyperbolic.

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Using Hidden Markov Modeling For Biogeographical Ancestry Analysis, Melvin R. Currie Jul 2019

Using Hidden Markov Modeling For Biogeographical Ancestry Analysis, Melvin R. Currie

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper describes a methodology for analyzing X-chromosome data to establish biogeographical contributions to the author’s X chromosome. We present an exposition of how Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) can be used as a black box for ancestry analysis and focus on a set of conditions that are not universal but fairly common. The first condition is that the ancestral populations are drawn from regions that have had very little or no contact with each other since prehistoric times. The second condition is that the number of possible ancestral populations is small. In this analysis, we assume that the ancestral populations …

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Voices: Conference On Teaching Stem With Music, September 27-28, 2017, Gregory J. Crowther Jul 2017

Voices: Conference On Teaching Stem With Music, September 27-28, 2017, Gregory J. Crowther

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This first-of-its-kind, online-only conference will explore the use of music to teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at the college level (including AP courses). Presentations will be live-streamed from the conference website, https://www.causeweb.org/voices. Online registrations (for only $10 apiece!) will be accepted at the conference website until the conclusion of the conference on September 28, 2017.

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One = Zero, Eric John Gofen Jul 2017

One = Zero, Eric John Gofen

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper, I use Mathematics in addition to the three most pure sciences --- Physics, Chemistry, and Rap --- to prove that 1=0. The argument uses The Ideal Gas Law, Ohm's Law, the Definitions of Power and Velocity in addition to indefinite integrals, simple mathematical operations, and the 99 Problems Law. The intuition-crushing result can be applied to all branches of mathematics and sciences and will likely go down as one of the greatest discoveries of all time.

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Some Effects Of The Human Genome Project On The Erdős Collaboration Graph, Chris Fields Jul 2014

Some Effects Of The Human Genome Project On The Erdős Collaboration Graph, Chris Fields

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The Human Genome Project introduced large-scale collaborations involving dozens to hundreds of scientists into biology. It also created a pressing need to solve discrete mathematics problems involving tens of thousands of elements. In this paper, we use minimal path lengths in the Erdős Collaboration Graph between prominent individual researchers as a measure of the distance between disciplines, and we show that the Human Genome Project brought laboratory biology as a whole closer to mathematics. We also define a novel graph reduction method and a metric that emphasizes the robustness of collaborative connections between researchers; these can facilitate the analysis of …

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Three Poems: The Lorenz Transformations, Rotating The Strange Attractor To Find The Principal Components, The Sieve Of Eratosthenes, Robin Chapman Jan 2013

Three Poems: The Lorenz Transformations, Rotating The Strange Attractor To Find The Principal Components, The Sieve Of Eratosthenes, Robin Chapman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

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A Mathematician Weighs In On The Evolution Debate, Kris H. Green Jul 2011

A Mathematician Weighs In On The Evolution Debate, Kris H. Green

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

There are a variety of reasons underlying the lack of public acceptance for the theory of evolution in the United States. An overlooked cause is related to problems with the mathematics curriculum in the K-12 setting. In this essay, we examine this relationship and propose changes to the mathematics curriculum that could improve mathematical thinking while also providing a basis for understanding theories, like evolution, that are poorly understood.

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