Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Oceans Of Space, Stephanie Steinbrecher '16

EnviroLab Asia

"Oceans of Space" relates my observations of the 2016 EnviroLab Asia Clinic Trip to Singapore and Sarawak, Malaysia. In this meditation, the concept of space serves as a lens to examine assumptions of geopolitical, historical, and philosophical positioning—regionally and globally. At the center of my inquiry is EnviroLab's connection to the Dayak communities in Baram, Sarawak. This region is experiencing dramatic social and ecological change as a result of industrial development. By triangulating my subjective impressions of this space, various knowledge systems, and the qualitative data EnviroLab gathered in Southeast Asia, I aim to untangle some paradoxes that complicate the …

The Wonder Of A Child, Shraddha Chaplot

The STEAM Journal

A personal piece on the wonder of childhood and the continuation of curiosity into adulthood.

Fire – The Enigma That Continues To Blaze, Sara Kapadia

The STEAM Journal

How did humans first discover fire? What stories do we pass down to explain the discovery of fire?

Jaguar Sun, Anya Nadal

The STEAM Journal

Cymatics, is derived from a Greek word, meaning "wave", is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena. The term was coined by Hans Jenny, a Swiss follower of the philosophical school known as anthroposophy. This is a visual representation of the frequency field. I created this piece from acrylic on canvas based on the subtle energies I can see and feel.

An Interview With The Scorpion: Walter O’Brien, Walter O'Brien

The STEAM Journal

An interview with Walter O'Brien (hacker handle: "Scorpion"), known as a businessman, information technologist, executive producer, and media personality who is the founder and CEO of Scorpion Computer Services, Inc. O'Brien is also the inspiration for and executive producer of the CBS television series, Scorpion.

The Art And Science Of Light Painting, Reid Godshaw

The STEAM Journal

A short overview of the making of light painting portraits explained by the artist.

Newton’S Third Law In Karmic Warfare, Kazmier Maślanka

The STEAM Journal

A work entitled "Newton's Third Law in Karmic Warfare" is a mathematical visual poem which is a perfect example of a technique, that I call The Paradigm Poem. This piece makes a direct connection with the concept of karma and Newton’s Third Law of motion. I will introduce the concept of “The Mathematical Paradigm Poem” to illuminate an example of how metaphor is used in mathematical visual poetry. I will also discuss much of the process in making this aesthetic expression.

Teleconnections In Steam: Antarctic Field-Camp Art, Craig Stevens, Gabby O'Connor

The STEAM Journal

We describe a component of a multi-element STEAM collaboration looking to explore ideas around the life cycle of Antarctic sea ice. One of the intermediate phases of the work involved the scientist deploying partially pre-made art components. Results were modulated by weather and operational constraints and generated a sequence of images and recordings as well as greater understanding of the creative collaboration process.

Gathering Steam In Health Care: A Student History, Michael J. Leach

The STEAM Journal

In this reflection, I demonstrate STEAM in health care by outlining my 15 years as a university student engaged in formal education, extracurricular learning, research, and employment.

Museum 4.0 As The Future Of Steam In Museums, Mark Walhimer

The STEAM Journal

Informal STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) activities (programs) and exhibits are common in science centers, children’s museums and natural history museums. As museums change to Museum 4.0 models (1), the STEAM exhibits and programs in museums also change. Museums 4.0 is the transformation of museums from a monolithic fixed location institution to a nimble community driven event driven organization. The Museum 4.0 becomes personalized to the visitor without fixed outcomes and without the physical restrictions of a single fixed location. As museums evolve to a Museum 4.0 model with visitor lead activities, STEAM activities within museums also change …

Race, Space, And The Conflict Inside Us, Francis Su

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Talking about race is hard. Our nation is wrestling with some open wounds about race. These sores have been around a while, but they have been brought to light recently by technology, politics, and an increasingly diverse population. And regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, we will all need to work at healing these sores, not just in our personal lives, but in our classrooms and in our profession.

A Sampling Kaczmarz-Motzkin Algorithm For Linear Feasibility, Jesus A. De Loera, Jamie Haddock, Deanna Needell

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We combine two iterative algorithms for solving large-scale systems of linear inequalities, the relaxation method of Agmon, Motzkin et al. and the randomized Kaczmarz method. We obtain a family of algorithms that generalize and extend both projection-based techniques. We prove several convergence results, and our computational experiments show our algorithms often outperform the original methods.

Biquasiles And Dual Graph Diagrams, Deanna Needell, Sam Nelson

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We introduce dual graph diagrams representing oriented knots and links. We use these combinatorial structures to define corresponding algebraic structures we call biquasiles whose axioms are motivated by dual graph Reidemeister moves, generalizing the Dehn presentation of the knot group analogously to the way quandles and biquandles generalize the Wirtinger presentation. We use these structures to define invariants of oriented knots and links. In particular, we identify an example of a finite biquasile whose counting invariant distinguishes the chiral knot 9-32 from its mirror image, demonstrating that biquasile counting invariants are distinct from biquandle counting invariants.

Finland's Economic Freeze, Shivang Mehta

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Abstract

The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis has been well documented and so has Germany’s booming manufacturing economy but these events are relatively easy to explain. Greece’s troubles can easily be traced to its social security structure and lack of land registry while Germany’s success is a result of labour reforms, an undervalued currency and an emphasis on small scale businesses which form the backbone of the economy. A relatively paradoxical case has been that of Finland; ranked second for global innovation by the World Economic Forum and with over $1.8 billion being invested by the government in the country’s tech …

Batched Stochastic Gradient Descent With Weighted Sampling, Deanna Needell, Rachel Ward

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We analyze a batched variant of Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with weighted sampling distribution for smooth and non-smooth objective functions. We show that by distributing the batches computationally, a significant speedup in the convergence rate is provably possible compared to either batched sampling or weighted sampling alone. We propose several computationally efficient schemes to approximate the optimal weights, and compute proposed sampling distributions explicitly for the least squares and hinge loss problems. We show both analytically and experimentally that substantial gains can be obtained

The Pinchot Wire: Private Cash, Public Lands - Why The Katahdin Woods And Waters National Monument Matters, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Here’s how President Obama celebrated the National Park Service’s 100th birthday: with the stroke of his pen, he established the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, one of the most innovative initiatives in U.S. environmental history. That’s because the 87,500-acre park, which encompasses some of the Pine Tree State’s most remarkable forests and waterways, is a gift of the Quimby family and comes with a $40 million endowment, a private-public partnership without parallel.

Tolerant Compressed Sensing With Partially Coherent Sensing Matrices, Tobias Birnbaum, Yonina C. Eldar, Deanna Needell

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

We consider compressed sensing (CS) using partially coherent sensing matrices. Most of CS theory to date is focused on incoherent sensing, that is, columns from the sensing matrix are highly uncorrelated. However, sensing systems with naturally occurring correlations arise in many applications, such as signal detection, motion detection and radar. Moreover, in these applications it is often not necessary to know the support of the signal exactly, but instead small errors in the support and signal are tolerable. In this paper, we focus on d-tolerant recovery, in which support set reconstructions are considered accurate when their locations match the true …

A Practical Study Of Longitudinal Reference Based Compressed Sensing For Mri, Samuel Birns, Bohyun Kim, Stephanie Ku, Kevin Stangl, Deanna Needell

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Compressed sensing (CS) is a new signal acquisition paradigm that enables the reconstruction of signals and images from a low number of samples. A particularly exciting application of CS is Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), where CS significantly speeds up scan time by requiring far fewer measurements than standard MRI techniques. Such a reduction in sampling time leads to less power consumption, less need for patient sedation, and more accurate images. This accuracy increase is especially pronounced in pediatric MRI where patients have trouble being still for long scan periods. Although such gains are already significant, even further improvements can be …

Freedom Through Inquiry, Francis Su

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

I delivered this speech at the Inquiry‐Based Learning Forum & 19th Annual Legacy of R.L. Moore Conference on August 4, 2016. It is partly an homage to an influential teacher, partly an excuse to articulate what makes some styles of teaching so effective, and partly an excuse to talk about difficult issues facing our nation and our classrooms today.

Teaching Differential Equations Through A Modeling First Approach, Brian Winkel

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Menger Sponge, E Laura Golberg

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Quantitative Literacy, Thomas L. Moore

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Greatest Integer Function, Alanna Rae

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Quandary Of Statistical Jurisprudence: A Review-Essay On Math On Trial By Schneps And Colmez, Noah Giansiracusa

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review-essay on the mother-and-daughter collaboration Math on Trial stems from my recent experience using this book as the basis for a college freshman seminar on the interactions between math and law. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this book as an accessible introduction to this enigmatic yet deeply important topic. For those considering teaching from this text (a highly recommended endeavor) I offer some curricular suggestions.

Book Review: A New Index For Predicting Catastrophes: Poems By Madhur Anand, Joanne Growney

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review explores Madhur Anand’s recent poetry collection from several points of view. One involves consideration of mathematical concepts and imagery in her poems. A second viewpoint takes into consideration Anand’s own field – she is a professor of environmental science with a focus on ecology. A third view considers the poems as art objects – words building pictures that offer to readers both insights and pleasures.

Simple Tools With Nontrivial Implications For Assessment Of Hypothesis-Evidence Relationships: The Interrogator’S Fallacy, Justus R. Riek

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper takes a mathematical analysis technique derived from the Interrogator’s Fallacy (in a legal context), expands upon it to identify a set of three interrelated probabilistic tools with wide applicability, and demonstrates their ability to assess hypothesis-evidence relationships associated with important problems

Fuzzy Logic In Health Care Settings: Moral Math For Value-Laden Choices, Sarah Voss

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This essay is intended as an example of “moral math”, i.e., ideas culled from mathematics which can positively impact social behavior. Specifically, it combines fuzzy logic with the ethical decisions which hospital staff and others are sometimes forced to make about health care (e.g., euthanasia issues following Hurricane Katrina). The assumption is that such decisions involve value-laden choices which lend themselves to “fuzzy” or “smart” protocols. The article discusses the history of fuzzy logic – what it is, how it is used, and how it might be even better-used as a support basis for making difficult choices …

Stop Ruining Math! Reasons And Remedies For The Maladies Of Mathematics Education, Rachel M. Steinig

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Did you love math as a kid? Or was it ruined for you? Sadly, many people have had math ruined for them for various reasons. Some might say that it was because of not understanding what was going on, being bored in class, parental or societal pressure to achieve in math, not seeing a point in learning math, wrong amount of homework, grades, curriculum, physical concerns, mean teachers, or any number of things. This article delves into the many common reasons why math is ruined for so many kids, and offers solutions so that math can be enjoyable for everyone. …

Al-Khwarizmı And The Hermeneutic Circle: Reflections On A Trip To Samarkand, Asuman G. Aksoy

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this paper we discuss al-Khwarzmi's life and aspects of his work and suggest a possible hermeneutic avenue into his contribution to mathematics.

Patterns Formed By Coins, Andrey M. Mishchenko

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non- overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of the two most important facts about circle packings, (1) that essentially whatever pattern we ask for, we may always arrange circles in that pattern, and (2) that under simple conditions on the pattern, there is an essentially unique arrangement of circles in that pattern. In the second half of the article, we consider related questions, but where we …