Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Theory Of Planned Behavior Model Fit Using Atod Prevention Program Data, Ying Jin

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This report is to test the Theory of Planned Behavior (TpB) model fit using the data collected from the ATOD Prevention Program conducted by the Operation Snowball Program from year 2004 to 2007 in Naperville, Illinois. Measurement Model and Structural Equation Modeling are used as principal modeling methods to test internal consistency of assigned measures for each construct and the dependency between constructs respectively. The results show that the ATOD Prevention Program data does not fit the TpB model perfectly. Extra paths should be added to the original theoretical model in order to obtain a satisfactory model fit.

The Effectiveness Of Institutional Intervention At Minimizing Demographic Inertia And Improving The Representation Of Women Faculty In Higher Education, Amanda V. Bakian

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Across all science and engineering disciplines, women currently receive 46% of the doctoral degrees granted annually. Despite gains in doctoral degrees earned by women over the past 30 years, they remain under-represented among full time tenured /tenure-track science and engineering faculty compared to their presence among degree recipients. The inequality gap is widest among full professors at 4 year research universities where women account for a mere 16% of all S&E full time full professors. Multiple hypothesis have been proposed to account for women's under-representation relative to men including those based on human capital/economic theory, feminist theory, innate biological gender …

The Pliocene/Pleistocene Evolution Of The Western Snake River Plain Near Grand View Idaho, Meagan R. Deraps

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The Western Snake River Plain provides us with a unique opportunity to study the evolution of basaltic volcanism. In addition to studying the horizontal variation at the surface of the plain, erosion by the Snake River also allows the study of the vertical variation. With the aid of a USGS EDMAP grant we mapped the Dorsey Butte quadrangle and southern half of the Little Joe Butte quadrangle at a scale of 1 :24,000. The quadrangles are located within both the Ada and Elmore counties of southwestern Idaho, approximately 30 km west of Mountain Home and 2 km north of Grand …

Random Motion And The Diffusion Of Brine Shrimp: A Project Based Learning Unit, Rebecca Atkins

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Over the years, there have been several trends, philosophies, and ideas about how mathematics should be taught. These have included progressive movements, essentialist movements, drill and practice, teacher-centered methodologies, student-centered methodologies, and others. However, despite these various instructional trends, research has found that mathematics teachers have basically taught the same way for years, with little or no variation with respect to the changing trends (Ward, 2001). For many students, the traditional teaching method employed in their mathematics classes is typically centered on the teacher and includes lecture in which the teacher provides the necessary definitions and notations and does several …

Using Real-World Data As A Basis For Problem-Based Learning: Investigating Preservation Biases Of Fish In Fossil Butte National Monument, Blair Larsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This project examined the design and development of an online problem-based learning module to teach earth-system science to K-12 educators. The module revolved around identifying earth sphere (lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere) interactions needed to produce mass fish mortality layers found in the Green River Formation at Fossil Butte National Monument. Students investigated the unique earth sphere combinations needed to produce mass fish mortality layers, reflected on the formation of such deposits, and examined the impact of these earth spheres on the earth system. As a supplement to the course, the students also analyzed data on fossils collected from a …

Investigations Into Mapping Lava Flows In The Snake River Plain, Idaho, Vinita Ruth Hobson-Broko

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The origin of the Snake River plain continues to be debated, but the plume model is most popular at the current time. Some theories, such as meteorite impact, have been excluded, but the remaining theories require more scrutiny.

Various methods of examining phenomena in the Snake River Plain were employed. Unsupervised classification of Landsat ETM data indicates that spectra can be used to differentiate between flows. However, photographs of flows at Craters of the Moon National Monument show wide variations in texture and color within a single flow. Vegetation grows preferentially on the smoother pahoehoe slabs and significantly impacting the …

Teaching Probability Through Use Of An Applet, Melissa Gregory Jackson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The use of technology in the classroom is an ongoing debate by educators. Many teachers consider it to be a valuable teaching tool. Despite the many advantages, there are also drawbacks in using technology. A Java applet is a particular kind of multimedia technology proven to be useful in education. Because of students' struggles with learning basic probability in Statistics 1040, I have created a probability applet to reinforce the concept of probability. The applet was tested with two Statistics 1040 classes. The majority of students agreed that they learned more about probability from using the applet. Several of the …

Logistic Models With Missing Categorical Covariates, Jeremiah Rounds

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We present an EM based solution to missing categorical covariates in Binomial models with logit links using an assumption that experimental units are drawn from a Multinomial population of infinite size. We further address the problem of separation of points inducing large variances on parameter estimates by the use of a novel score-modification based on Firth's bias-reduction score-modification. We simulate to address questions about estimate bias, distribution, and appropriate parameter coverage by Wald intervals.

Approaches To Promote Active, Conceptual Learning In A Pedagogically Hybrid Introductory Statistics Course, Brittany L. Allred

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Statistics education is an active area of research where discovery-based learning is becoming more prominent. This project reviews how the USEI and GAISE recommendations can be implemented in the statistics classroom. Further, the project describes the creation of a library of classroom materials for an introductory statistics course. The results are also discussed from implementing various library materials, along with the student response to hands-on learning techniques.

Intermediate-Complexity Biological Modeling Framework For Nutrient Cycling In Lakes Based On Physical Structure, Michael Clay Rigley

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Mathematical models for the change in concentration of total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) in mountain lakes are developed based on the dynamics of coupled, well-mixed containers. Each includes a stratified lake structure without the complexity of a full fluid model. A lake is divided into a suite of compartments based on physical structure: warm upper layer (epilimnion), cold inflow and insertion layer (metalimnion), cold lower layer (hypolimnion), and a warm shallow shelf. With the compartments as the framework and literature values for uptake rates, death rates, half-saturation constants, and sinking rates, systems of equations are written for three models. The first …

The Statistical Evaluation Of Collective Risk Models With Various Distributional Assumptions, Chang Li

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Our thesis includes 2 sections. In section 1, we mainly discuss the distribution function and the empirical simulation of the total claims amount for a portfolio with multiple distributional assumptions, under the collective risk model for a single period.

In section 2, we discuss the collective risk model for an extended period, which mainly deals with the amount of surplus over several periods of time. Let Un denote the surplus at time n, then we interested in the probability of ruin, that is, the probability that there exists an n such that Un< O. In this section, we put forward an algorithm for the probability of ruin (both theoretical and empirical) using this model, with various distributional assumptions, and compare the theoretical and empirical results.

The reference of this project is Actuarial …

Probe-Level Statistical Models For Differential Expression Of Genes In Bovine Nt Studies, Jason L. Bell

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A brief introduction of microarray technology and its uses is given. This technology is commonly used in agricultural research, including research in nuclear transfer, which motivated this study. There are 3 classes of statistical models compared: probeset-level, weighted probeset-level and probe-level.

Different statistical mod els are compared on 3 spike-in experiments to assess the relative performance in identifying differentially expressed genes . A novel nested factorial model was found to outperform all other models compared in this study in one spike-in experiment, and was found to be competitive in its performance relative to the other models on the other spike-in …

Comparison Of Random Forests And Cforest: Variable Importance Measures And Prediction Accuracies, Rong Xia

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Random forests are ensembles of trees that give accurate predictions for regression, classification and clustering problems. The CART tree, the base learn er employed by random forests, has been criticized because of bias in the selection of splitting variables. The performance of random forests is suspect due to this criticism. A new implementation of random forests, Cforest, which is claimed to outperform random forests in both predictive power and variable importance measures , was developed based on Ctree, an implementation of conditional inference trees.

We address the underlying mechanism of random forests and Cforest in this report. Comparison of random …

An Investigation Of The Ends Of Finitely Generated Groups, Daniel T. Murphree

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Geometric group theory is a relatively new branch of mathematics, studied as a distinct area since the 1990's. It explores invariant properties of groups based on group actions defined on topological or geometrical spaces. One of the pioneering works in geometric group theory is the article "Topological Methods in Group Theory" by Peter Scott and Terry Wall, written in 1977. This article was an overview of revised notes from an advanced course give in Liverpool in the same year. This report is an attempt to make these notes more accessible to lower level graduate students in the fields of topology …

Applications Of Modern Classification Methods To Predict Occurrences Of Rare And Invasive Plant Species, Stacey Reynolds

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Statistical classification methods are among the most widely used statistical procedures in ecology. Applications include vegetation mapping by remote sensing (Steele 2000), discrimination of subspecies using morphological measurements (Fisher 1936, 1938; Conner and Schenk 2003), and species distribution modelling (Guisan and Zimmerman 2000). Examples of the last application abound in the ecological literature and include predicting the distribution or characteristics of plant species (see, e.g., Austin et al. 1990), predicting presence and absence aquatic biota in streams (Hawkins et al. 2000), and habit at relationships of terrestrial animal species (Welch and MacMahon 2005). Over the last 20 years two mainstays …

Heritability Of Cognition Subscales In The Cache County Memory Study Cohort And Methods For Estimating Heritability, Colette Kelly Childs

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The rapid improvement of genotyping technology holds the promise of better understanding the genetic causes of complex disease. While traits of interest often include the presence or absence of disease, there is growing interest in intermediate phenotypes (or so-called endophenotypes) that may yield more information about disease onset or course. In particular, changes over time with respect to an investigative ordinal measure often contain significant predictive power, and rate-of-change phenotypes are becoming important in their own right when studying genetic association. Initial steps in assessing the potential genetic determinants of a continuous trait often involve estimating the degree of the …

Cow Insurance Vs. Human Insurance: A Comparison Study, Corlan Fawcett

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper will compare the premiums to insure cows and humans for n-year term, n-year endowment, and whole life insurance. It will go into more depth for whole life premium s that would be charged, such that the insurance company is 95 percent confident that they will not lose money. In particular the paper will look at how the variance affects the premiums for an insurance company insuring 100 cows.

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of A Probability Applet, Chelsa Green Tuddenham

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project was to develop and examine a computerized interactive probability applet designed to teach basic concepts of probability. The applet design was intended to be a user-friendly way to encourage understanding of basic probability concepts such as, rules of probability, probabilities of mutually exclusive events, and the multiplication rule. Thirty participants were recruited from Utah State University and were asked to participate in the evaluation process of the probability applet. The evaluation of the probability applet consisted of three parts: First, a group of participants were video recorded and asked to voice any and all thoughts …

Comparison Of Exact Methods For Analyzing Family-Based Samples, Abbie Lundgreen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Family-based association tests are used to identify genes that increase the risk of developing a disease, while controlling for spurious associations caused by population structure. The exact family-based association test, exact FBAT, is a unified approach which can be app lied to tests of different genetic models, sampling designs, null hypotheses , and missing parental information.

The purpose of this report is to compare the power of the exact FBAT with two other tests, exact conditional logistic regression (CLR) and the exact trend test for clustered data (QEM). Pedigrees of sibships were simulated based upon a variety of different parameters, …

The Classification Of Simple Lie Algebras In Maple, D. Russell Sadler

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Lie algebras are invaluable tools in mathematics and physics as they enable us to study certain geometric objects such as Lie groups and differentiable manifolds. The computer algebra system Maple has several tools in its Lie Algebras package to work with Lie algebras and Lie groups. The purpose of this paper is to supplement the existing software with tools that are essential for the classification of simple Lie algebras over C.

In particular, we use a method to find a Cartan subalgebra of a Lie algebra in polynomial time. From the Cartan subalgebra we can compute the corresponding root system. …