Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Math 242: Elements Of Probability And Statistics (Syllabus), Ahmad Almomani Ph.D.

School of Arts & Sciences

This syllabus was developed by SUNY Geneseo Professor Ahmad Almomani during the spring 2026 semester.

Course Objectives:

Upon successful completion of Math 242, R/Elements of Probability and Statistics, a student will be able to: 

• Organize, present and interpret statistical data, both numerically and graphically; 
• Use various methods to compute the probabilities of events; 
• Analyze and interpret statistical data using appropriate probability distributions, e.g. binomial and normal. 
• Apply central limit theorem to describe inferences; 
• Construct and interpret confidence intervals to estimate means, standard deviations and proportions for populations; 
• Perform parameter testing techniques, including single and multi-sample tests for means, standard deviations …

Columnas: The Honors Program Newsletter At Bentley University, Amanda Li, Wilson Jan, Michael Raphael, Alexandra Rieckehoff, Karina Wu, Michael Shehata, Nilufar Noorian, Eloise Weintraub

Honors Program

INSIDE THE MODERN WORLD

Page 2: Stepping Out by Amanda Li

Page 3: Inside the Corporate Slop Bowl by Wilson Jan

Page 4: The Silencing: An Evaluation of the Global Attacks on the Right to Protest by Michael Raphael

THE SOUND OF CHANGE

Page 5: The Social, Cultural, and Economic Impact of Bad Bunny by Alexandra Rieckehoff

Page 6: Streaming Changed Music, But Is It Fair to Artists? by Karina Wu

Page 7: Feeling the Music: How Haptic Wearables Are Changing the Way We Experience Sound by Michael Shehata

SHIFTING SYSTEMS

Page 8: The Story Behind Davos, One of the …

2026 Research Day Program, Lincoln Memorial University

Research Day

This program contains abstracts and presentation summaries from LMU's 2026 Annual Research Day conference.

Aiw26s: Machine Learning Of Structured Data, Moumita Saha

Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute Publications

This workshop introduces the fundamentals of machine learning for structured data, focusing on tabular datasets and real-world applications. Participants explore key concepts such as data types, data preprocessing, feature engineering, and supervised learning methods. The session covers commonly used models, including linear regression, logistic regression, decision trees, and neural networks, along with evaluation metrics such as RMSE, accuracy, and confusion matrices. By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained a practical understanding of how to build, interpret, and evaluate machine learning models for structured data.

Step By Step Progress Told On Florence State Building, Florence Times-Florence Astronomy Society

Documents

News article from the Florence Astronomy Society about the progress of the new Planetarium and Observatory for Florence State College.

10 Men Construct, Donate Florence State's Telescope, Florence Picture

Documents

News article focusing on the 10 men who built the telescope for the Florence State College Observatory. These men were a part of the Florence Astronomy Society and built this telescope to donate to the university.

Fsc Will Have A 'Big Eye', Bob Dixon

Documents

News article from The Florence Times about the new 14 1/2-inch reflector telescope built and donated to Florence State College.

Florence State University Planetarium-Observatory Information And Schedule, Florence Herald Offset

Documents

Florence State University Planetarium & Observatory Information and Schedule Brochure for Academic Year 1970-1971

Structural Silence: When Ai Infrastructure Fails Speakers Of Underrepresented Languages, Avijit Roy, Proma Roy

Publications and Research

Artificial intelligence tools for education and language support are increasingly framed as scalable responses to access gaps in under-resourced communities. Yet the infrastructure underlying these tools—training corpora, tokenization schemes, evaluation benchmarks, and deployment architectures—encodes a set of assumptions that systematically disadvantages speakers of underrepresented languages before a single model is trained. This paper examines those assumptions through the lens of Bengali, one of the world’s most widely spoken languages with roughly 285 million speakers (Ethnologue, 2025; International Communication and Leadership School, 2026), and the structural barriers that emerge when attempting to build AI-assisted educational tools for Bengali-speaking learners in low-connectivity …

Freedom Readers And Sustainable Development Goal 4: Advancing Literacy In Low-Income Communities Of South Carolina, Madison Hayes

Goal 4: Quality Education

No abstract provided.

Conservation Communication In Web 2.0: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Alveus Sanctuary's Strategies On Twitch.Tv, Hope Denison

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how environmental creators can effectively transmit conservation messages in the evolving Web 2.0 media environment. The case of Alveus Sanctuary, a virtual sanctuary and education center on Twitch.TV, is used to explore the strategies currently used to engage audiences and raise ecological awareness online. Thematic analysis of interviews with the sanctuary’s founder revealed that Alveus combines traditional environmental education with an influencer business model to engage online audiences, leveraging parasocial behavior, interactivity, and collaboration to garner support. A quantitative content analysis of social media posts revealed that these strategies effectively induce parasocial engagement in online spaces. These …

Think First, Chatgpt Later: Guiding Human-Ai Collaboration For Learning Gains In Independent Human Creativity, Sarah Shi Hui Wong, Sophia Xuefei Qiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT can boost creative performance, but do these boosts translate into learning gains? This study examined whether the benefits of ChatGPT for creativity persist even when its assistance is removed, and how people can effectively use ChatGPT to enhance their learning and independent creativity. University students (N = 196) solved a creative product improvement task either independently (human-only group) or using ChatGPT freely (general-AI group) or using ChatGPT in a guided way (regulated-AI group). Specifically, the regulated-AI group used a novel “think first, ChatGPT later” approach—they first generated their own ideas, then collaborated …

Exploring The U.S. Public Service Employees’ Experiences With Gamified Cybersecurity Awareness Training, Bisola Adepoju

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the U.S. public service employees' experiences with gamified cybersecurity awareness training. The primary research question guiding this inquiry was: How do U.S. public service employees make sense of their lived experiences with gamified cybersecurity awareness training? Two secondary questions examined what aspects of the training employees perceive as meaningful or disengaging, and how they interpret their motivation, engagement, and cybersecurity awareness during training. I chose an interpretive qualitative research design grounded in a constructivist paradigm and purposefully selected 11 U.S. public service employees who had participated in gamified cybersecurity awareness training. …

A Systematic Review Of Mathematical Interpretations Of The Weton Marriage Tradition Within Islamic Cultural Contexts, Ratna Damayanti, Surya Sari Faradiba

Jurnal Pendidikan Sains

This study is grounded in the limited integration of mathematics, culture, and religion within academic discussions of local traditions, particularly the weton marriage calculation practice. It aims to explore the mathematical concepts embedded in weton calculations and to analyse these practices from an Islamic law perspective within an interdisciplinary framework. The study employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method following the six-stage PRISMA 2020 protocol, including the formulation of research questions, development of a search strategy, application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, study selection, quality assessment, and thematic synthesis. Data were collected from Google Scholar and Garuda using the keywords …

Ai Adoption In Research Administration At Emerging Research Institutions, Dylan Ruediger, Ruby Macdougall, Stefanie Brachfield, Douglas R. Dechow, Jonathan Parker, Jana Remy

Library Articles and Research

"With funding from the National Science Foundation’s GRANTED program (grant #2437518), Ithaka S+R, Chapman University, and Montclair State University organized two workshops to help research administrators consider how to leverage AI to build research capacity at ERIs. Our first workshop, held at Montclair State in September 2025, brought together 31 participants from 13 academic and medical institutions in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania region. Our second workshop, hosted by Chapman University on December 5, 2025, included 32 participants from 13 colleges and universities in Southern California. The approximately 2,600 ERIs in the United States receive a disproportionately small amount of federal …

Interview With Orca Award Winner David Hage, Unl Chemistry; Drug-Protein Interactions, Mark Griep, David Hage

UNL ORCA Interview Series

Prof. David Hage was awarded the ORCA in 2018. He was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and earned a bachelor’s in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse. Next, he earned a doctorate from Iowa State University and did postdoctoral work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. In 1989, he joined UNL as an assistant professor of chemistry and quickly rose through the ranks. He has won many awards and, for the past 13 years, has been the James Hewet University Professor of Chemistry. Allow me to share some remarkable facts about Dave before we get into …

Curriculum For A Two Semester Calculus Course Specializing In Life Science And Data Science, Patrick Mcclain

LSU Master's Theses

Traditionally, introductory calculus has been designed for engineering and physics students, often leaving students majoring in data science or life sciences with a curriculum that lacks professional relevance and is overly reliant on problems that focus on computational fluency. This thesis proposes a two-semester sequence, called MATH 153X and MATH 154X, specifically tailored for the Louisiana State University (LSU) Dual Enrollment program and university-level data science and life sciences majors. By integrating modern computational tools—such as symbolic calculators and artificial intelligence (AI) tools—the proposed curriculum shifts the pedagogical focus from procedural symbolic manipulation toward conceptual literacy.

Through a series …

Advancing Environmental Justice Through Chemical Education: Perspective From New Orleans’ Water And Air Quality Challenges, Ja’Lynn Keller, Sita Aggarwal, Rami A. Al-Horani, Morewell Gasseller, Navneet Goyal

Faculty and Staff Publications

New Orleans, Louisiana, faces profound environmental vulnerabilities arising from the convergence of industrial pollution, urban runoff, and climate change–driven weather events. This paper examines systemic challenges affecting water and air quality in the region, with particular focus on low-income and marginalized communities disproportionately burdened by environmental degradation. Drawing on educational and community-based monitoring initiatives at Xavier University of Louisiana and Southeastern Louisiana University, we highlight the integration of student learning with real-time data collection of contaminants such as fecal coliforms, heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina revealed significant fecal contamination in sediment layers, …

Documenting For Success: A Case Study Of A Graduate Writing Retreat, Elliott Rose, Denise Wetzel, Sara C. Kern, Katie O'Hara-Krebs, Laurin Davis, Salah Seoudi, Carmen Cole

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Graduate students often find themselves balancing the demands of research and writing while managing complex academic and personal needs. Writing retreats provide an intentional space for graduate students to focus on their academic goals while supporting community-building, institutional belonging, and a welcoming environment. This proposal outlines a model for academic librarians and staff to plan and implement an effective graduate writing retreat designed to support graduate student academic activities through intentional collaboration and documentation.

Penn State University’s (PSU) Graduate Student Writing Retreat started as an event housed within the University Library’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) department. The retreat …

A Review Of Oer Math Homework Systems, Rachel Bailey, Nathan Carter

Open Educational Resources Publications

This report evaluates four leading open educational resource (OER) math homework systems—MyOpenMath, WeBWorK, Ximera, and XYZ Homework—for their suitability in Bentley University’s first-year mathematics courses. The review compares cost, usability, LMS integration, available content, and alignment with Bentley curricula. MyOpenMath emerges as the strongest option due to its usability, robust problem libraries, and fully free access. XYZ Homework offers comparable features but includes student fees. Ximera and WeBWorK provide powerful capabilities but require greater technical expertise. The report concludes with recommendations for implementation and needed faculty support.

Redesigning Online Graduate Orientation To Foster Academic Resilience And Prevent Underperformance, Stella Michael-Makri, David E. Rodriguez

Journal of Academic Underperformance

Graduate students in fully online programs often begin their academic journey without adequate preparation for the emotional, structural, and cultural challenges of graduate-level work. For students who are first-generation, racially marginalized, international, or returning to education after time away, this lack of scaffolding can lead to early disengagement, underperformance, or attrition. Orientation, often treated as a checklist of logistical tasks, represents a missed opportunity for meaningful academic intervention. This manuscript proposes a five-module conceptual model for online graduate orientation designed to proactively support online graduate students in the domains of emotional regulation and academic identity, time management and executive functioning, …

Measuring What Matters: Specifications Grading And Latin* Students’ Mathematics Identity, Luis Miguel Fernández, Mayra Ortiz Galarza, Cristina Villalobos, Martha Asare

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

This study examined Specifications Grading, an alternative grading system emphasizing clearly defined learning outcomes and revision, and mathematics identity among 846 Latin* Calculus I students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Mathematics identity, comprising competence/performance, recognition, and interest, was measured at the beginning and end of the semester. Repeated-measures analyses indicated stable competence/performance and recognition alongside declines in interest. Specifications Grading was associated with increased mathematics identity, and multilingual students experienced smaller declines than their peers overall.

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Este estudio examinó la calificación por especificaciones, un sistema de evaluación alternativo que enfatiza resultados de aprendizaje claramente definidos y oportunidades estructuradas de revisión, …

Numerals And Other Means Of Expressing Plurality In Language And Thought: A Developmental Perspective Across Cultures., Giovanni Giuseppe G.G. Nicosia Prof.

Numeracy

Several ancient languages use linguistic structures to differentiate between singular, dual, and plural forms that are used when one, two, or many objects are referenced. (Some languages go further, adding a trial form to differentiate two from three.) In many modern languages, numerals are used to convey precise number. After reviewing a range of ways languages express number (including the interesting case of Pirahã which does not express precise number), the paper concludes with a proposed developmental path for the expression of quantity in languages.

Tutoring Prompt For Personalized Self-Study Using Generative Ai, Vasiliy S. Znamenskiy

Open Educational Resources

This educational material presents a reusable tutoring prompt for general-purpose generative AI systems (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity) designed to support personalized self-study. The prompt turns a chatbot into an adaptive self-testing engine: it asks a sequence of multiple-choice questions, waits for the learner’s response, provides brief feedback, and adjusts difficulty based on performance. While the approach can be adapted to many disciplines, the current implementation is tuned to College Physics 2e, Chapter 21 (Circuits and DC Instruments) and uses “formulas only” answer choices to emphasize symbolic reasoning and reduce reliance on verbal cues. Shared in the spirit …

The Need For Developing Psychologically Informed Physical Therapy Education, Dustin Cox

Journal of Applied Disciplines

Chronic pain presents a multifaceted challenge for healthcare providers, often impacting patients' physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. Research indicates that individuals with chronic pain process pain through emotional and reward pathways in the brain, underscoring the need for integrative treatment approaches. Evidence supports the effectiveness of combining psychological interventions with physical rehabilitation to improve outcomes. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a mindfulness-based behavioral therapy, has shown promise in addressing the psychological dimensions of chronic pain. However, physical therapists often lack formal training in ACT. This study protocol was designed to explore effective methods for educating physical therapists in ACT principles …

“It’S A Lot More To It Than Just Research”: Integrating Critical Data Literacy And Reasoning With Data Into A Stem Summer Camp, Marc T. Sager, Saki L. Milton, Candace Walkington

Publications

Purpose: This study explores how middle-grade girls from predominantly underrepresented and underserved racially and ethnically minoritized (UUREM) backgrounds developed critical data literacy (CDL) through participation in a week-long residential STEM camp. Given the increasing importance of data science education in a data-driven world, this research examines how informal learning environments can support CDL development among youth from historically marginalized groups.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study draws on qualitative interview data from eleven participants, and their group-produced artifacts to investigate how the camp experience supported engagement with data and the development of CDL. Interviews explored participants' experiences with data collection, organization, analysis, and …

Identifying Priorities To Guide Extension Water Quality Programming In Utah, Clare Entwistle, Sarah Erwin, Stephanie Vaughn

Outcomes and Impact Quarterly

Utah State University Extension water quality faculty conducted a statewide water quality needs assessment to identify priority contaminants and resource gaps. The results found that elevated nutrient levels and sedimentation were the top concerns where additional resources would be beneficial. In addition, insufficient funding for improvements and low public engagement were identified as key challenges in addressing water quality issues. Results revealed current unmet needs with regional variation to inform Extension resource allocation and programming.

The Illusion Of Causality In Llms: A Developmentally Grounded Analysis Of Semantic Scaffolding And Benchmark–Capability Mismatches, Daisuke Akiba

Publications and Research

Recent benchmarks increasingly report that large language models (LLMs) exhibit human-like causal reasoning abilities, including counterfactual inference and intervention planning. However, many such evaluations rely on domains that are heavily represented in training data and embed strong semantic cues, raising the possibility that apparent causal competence may reflect semantic pattern recombination rather than structure-sensitive causal reasoning. Drawing on human developmental theories of causal induction, this perspective argues that genuine causal understanding requires robustness to novelty and reliance on conditional structure rather than semantic familiarity. To illustrate the testability of this claim, the paper includes a pilot demonstration using synthetic causal …

Navigating Ethical Considerations And Implications Of Ai Chatbots In Higher Education: A Systematic Review, Ons Al-Shamaileh, Ramy Hammady, Mahmoud Abdelrahman, Omar Mubin

All Works

This systematic review explores the ethical challenges associated with the use of AI-based chatbots in higher education, focusing on their implications for students, educators, institutions, and administrative stakeholders. Following PRISMA guidelines, peer-reviewed literature published between 2014 and 2024 was systematically identified across eight major academic databases, yielding a total of 109 eligible studies. A thematic analysis of the included literature indicates that concerns related to academic integrity are most frequently discussed, alongside recurring issues involving data privacy and security, algorithmic bias, overreliance on automated systems, and the risk of inaccurate or misleading outputs. The findings further demonstrate considerable variation in …

Demystifying Hardware Formal Verification For Undergraduate Education: A Risc-V Processor Case Study With Coursework Implementation, Riley A. Peters

Master's Theses

Hardware verification engineers apply formal methods to prove that a digital device always behaves according to its specification. This differs from traditional functional verification, in which engineers establish correctness by repeatedly sending test inputs to the device and comparing the outputs against a reference model. With the growing complexity of integrated circuits, the demand for digital verification engineers with formal methods experience has continued to increase. However, California Polytechnic State University: San Luis Obispo's current curriculum lacks dedicated material to prepare students for these roles.

This thesis seeks to address the lack of formal methods material through two efforts. First, …