Mathematics Commons^™

Fake Real Quadratic Orders, Richard Michael Oh

Theses and Dissertations

The study of fake real quadratic orders is fascinating as their class group structure is similiar to real quadratic fields. Statistical data strongly agree with the heuristics of Cohen and Lenstra of real quadratics with class number one. We will investigate why this holds true as well as explore other analogues to open conjecture on real quadratic fields, such as the Ankeny-Artin-Chowla Conjecture, and present various results that mark the similiarities between real quadratic fields and fake real quadratic orders. Fake real quadratics are defined by inverting an ideal above any prime p which is split in OK where K …

The Non-Existence Of A Covering System With All Moduli Distinct, Large And Square-Free, Melissa Kate Bechard

Theses and Dissertations

The work in this thesis is based on a paper written by Bob Hough in 2013. This thesis addresses the conjecture posed by Erdos that the least modulus for a covering system can be arbitrarily large. Hough proves the least modulus cannot be arbitrarily large. In this thesis, we present Hough’s proof for the case of square-free moduli.

Epistasis In Predator-Prey Relationships, Iuliia Inozemtseva, James P. Braselton

Mathematical Sciences: Faculty Publications

Epistasis is the interaction between two or more genes to control a single phenotype. We model epistasis of the prey in a two-locus two-allele problem in a basic predator-prey relationship. The resulting model allows us to examine both population sizes as well as genotypic and phenotypic frequencies. In the context of several numerical examples, we show that if epistasis results in an undesirable or desirable phenotype in the prey by making the particular genotype more or less susceptible to the predator or dangerous to the predator, elimination of undesirable phenotypes and then genotypes occurs.

Spatiotemporal Crime Analysis, James Q. Tay, Abish Malik, Sherry Towers, David Ebert

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There has been a rise in the use of visual analytic techniques to create interactive predictive environments in a range of different applications. These tools help the user sift through massive amounts of data, presenting most useful results in a visual context and enabling the person to rapidly form proactive strategies. In this paper, we present one such visual analytic environment that uses historical crime data to predict future occurrences of crimes, both geographically and temporally. Due to the complexity of this analysis, it is necessary to find an appropriate statistical method for correlative analysis of spatiotemporal data, as well …

Isometric Weighted Composition Operators, Valentin Matache

Mathematics Faculty Publications

A composition operator is an operator on a space of functions defined on the same set. Its action is by composition to the right with a fixed selfmap of that set. A composition operator followed by a multiplication operator is called a weighted composition operator. In this paper, we study when weighted composition operators on the Hilbert Hardy space of the open unit disc are isometric. We find their Wold decomposition in select cases and apply it to the computation of numerical ranges.

Calculation Of The Killing Form Of A Simple Lie Group, Sean A. Broughton

Mathematical Sciences Technical Reports (MSTR)

The Killing form of a simple Lie Algebra is determined from invariants of the extended root diagrams of the Lie algebra.

Math Talk: Preparing Your Conference Presentation, Gizem Karaali

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

If you are a typical reader of this blog, then you recently wrapped up your finals week and then dutifully made a summer plan. And then came the summer. Your plan may have involved working on a manuscript, preparing for a qualifying exam or a new course coming up in the fall, drafting a grant proposal, learning a new language (human or machine), eating kale in four different forms, and perhaps some fun times under the sun. Some, like me, also made plans to travel to conferences and give talks. Gearing up to get ready for my first conference of …

Light Pollution Research Through Citizen Science, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Light pollution (LP) can disrupt and/or degrade the health of all living things, as well as, their environments. The goal of my research at the NOAO was to check the accuracy of the citizen science LP reporting systems entitled: Globe at Night (GaN), Dark Sky Meter (DSM), and Loss of the Night (LoN). On the GaN webpage, the darkness of the night sky (DotNS) is reported by selecting a magnitude chart. Each magnitude chart has a different density/number of stars around a specific constellation. The greater number of stars implies a darker night sky. Within the DSM iPhone application, a …

Four Quotient Set Gems, Stephan Ramon Garcia, Michael Someck '14, Bob Lutz '13, Bryan Brown '15, Michael Dairyko '13

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Our aim in this note is to present four remarkable facts about quotient sets. These observations seem to have been overlooked by the MONTHLY, despite its intense coverage of quotient sets over the years.

Exponential Decay Of Reconstruction Error From Binary Measurements Of Sparse Signals, Richard Baraniuk, Simon Foucart, Deanna Needell, Yaniv Plan, Mary Wootters

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Binary measurements arise naturally in a variety of statistical and engineering applications. They may be inherent to the problem—e.g., in determining the relationship between genetics and the presence or absence of a disease—or they may be a result of extreme quantization. A recent influx of literature has suggested that using prior signal information can greatly improve the ability to reconstruct a signal from binary measurements. This is exemplified by onebit compressed sensing, which takes the compressed sensing model but assumes that only the sign of each measurement is retained. It has recently been shown that the number of one-bit measurements …

Acyclic And Indifference-Transitive Collective Choice Functions., Katey Bjurstrom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arrow's classic theorem shows that any collective choice function satisfying independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) and Pareto (P), where the range is a subset of weak orders, is based on a dictator. This thesis focuses on Arrovian collective choice functions in which the range is generalized to include acyclic, indifference-transitive (ACIT) relations on the set of alternatives. We show that Arrovian ACIT collective choice functions with domains satisfying the free-quadruple property are based on a unique weakly decisive voter; however, this is not necessarily true for ACIT collective choice functions where Arrow's independence condition is weakened. For ACIT collective choice …

Functional Equations With Involution Related To Sine And Cosine Functions., Allison Perkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Let G be an abelian group, C be the _eld of complex numbers, _ 2 G be any _xed, nonzero element and _ : G ! G be an involution. In Chapter 2, we determine the general solution f; g : G ! C of the functional equation f(x + _y + _) + g(x + y + _) = 2f(x)f(y) for all x; y 2 G. Let G be an arbitrary group, z0 be any _xed, nonzero element in the center Z(G) of the group G, and _ : G ! G be an involution. The main goals of …

Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary Mathematics: A Focus On Decimals, Signe Kastberg, Crystal Morton

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In the last 25 years a small collection of reports of studies focused on gaining insight into PTs’ knowledge of decimals has been published. Three themes are used to frame findings from papers published prior to 1998. Additional findings from papers published between 1998 and 2011 are discussed. Direction for future research that can contribute to the development of curriculum and instruction in mathematics teacher education is shared.

Prospective Elementary Mathematics Teacher Content Knowledge: What Do We Know, What Do We Not Know, And Where Do We Go?, Eva Thanheiser, Christine Browning, Alden J. Edson, Jane-Jane Lo, Ian Whitacre, Dana Olanoff, Crystal Morton

The Mathematics Enthusiast

In this Special Issue, the authors reviewed 112 research studies from 1978 to 2012 on prospective elementary teachers’ content knowledge in five content areas: whole numbers and operations, fractions, decimals, geometry and measurement, and algebra. Looking across these studies, this final paper identifies the trends and common themes in terms of the counts and types of studies and commonalities among findings. Analyses of the counts show that the number of articles published each year focusing on prospective teacher (PT) content knowledge is increasing. Most articles across the content areas show that PTs tend to rely on procedures rather than concepts. …

Appendix: References By Content Area

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Lynn Hart

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The authors in this Special Issue of The Mathematics Enthusiast make an important contribution to the knowledge base in mathematics education. They examine a body of research on a significant issue. They review what we know and make suggestions about what we need to know. They move the field forward by taking the time to look back and learn.

Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary Mathematics: A Focus On Fractions, Dana Olanoff, Jane-Jane Lo, Jennifer Tobias

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This article presents a research summary of prospective elementary teachers’ (PTs’) mathematical content knowledge in the area of fractions. The authors conducted an extensive review of the research literature and present the findings across three time frames: a historical look (pre-­‐1998), a current perspective (1998–2011), and a look at the horizon (2011–2013). We discuss 43 articles written across these time frames that focus on PTs’ fraction knowledge. Consistent across these papers is that PTs’ fraction knowledge is relatively strong when it comes to performing procedures, but that they generally lack flexibility in moving away from procedures and using “fraction number …

Tme Volume 11, Number 2

The Mathematics Enthusiast

No abstract provided.

Boundary Value Problems Of Nabla Fractional Difference Equations, Abigail M. Brackins

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this dissertation we develop the theory of the nabla fractional self-adjoint difference equation,

∇_a^ν(p∇y)(t)+q(t)y(ρ(t)) = f(t),

where 0 < ν < 1.We begin with an introduction to the nabla fractional calculus. In the second chapter, we show existence and uniqueness of the solution to a fractional self-adjoint initial value problem. We find a variation of constants formula for this fractional initial value problem, and use the variation of constants formula to derive the Green's function for a related boundary value problem. We study the Green's function and its properties in several settings. For a simplified boundary value problem, we show that the Green's function is nonnegative and we find its maximum and the maximum of its integral. For a boundary value problem with generalized boundary conditions, we find the Green's function and show that it is a generalization of the first Green's function. In the third chapter, we use the Contraction Mapping Theorem to prove existence and uniqueness of a positive solution to a forced self-adjoint fractional difference equation with a finite limit. We explore modifications to the forcing term and modifications to the space of functions in which the solution exists, and we provide examples to demonstrate the use of these theorems.

Advisers: Lynn Erbe and Allan Peterson

The Neural Ring: Using Algebraic Geometry To Analyze Neural Codes, Nora Youngs

Department of Mathematics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Neurons in the brain represent external stimuli via neural codes. These codes often arise from stimulus-response maps, associating to each neuron a convex receptive field. An important problem confronted by the brain is to infer properties of a represented stimulus space without knowledge of the receptive fields, using only the intrinsic structure of the neural code. How does the brain do this? To address this question, it is important to determine what stimulus space features can - in principle - be extracted from neural codes. This motivates us to define the neural ring and a related neural ideal, algebraic objects …

Bipartitions Based On Degree Constraints, Pamela I. Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For a graph G = (V,E), we consider a bipartition {V₁,V₂} of the vertex set V by placing constraints on the vertices as follows. For every vertex v in V_i, we place a constraint on the number of neighbors v has in V_i and a constraint on the number of neighbors it has in V_3-i. Using three values, namely 0 (no neighbors are allowed), 1 (at least one neighbor is required), and X (any number of neighbors are allowed) for each of the four constraints, results in 27 distinct types of …

Properties Of Small Ordered Graphs Whose Vertices Are Weighted By Their Degree, Constance M. Blalock

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Graphs can effectively model biomolecules, computer systems, and other applications. A weighted graph is a graph in which values or labels are assigned to the edges of the graph. However, in this thesis, we assign values to the vertices of the graph rather than the edges and we modify several standard graphical measures to incorporate these vertex weights. In particular, we designate the degree of each vertex as its weight. Previous research has not investigated weighting vertices by degree. We find the vertex weighted domination number in connected graphs, beginning with trees, and we define how weighted vertices can affect …

Problems In The Theory Of Convergence Spaces, Daniel R. Patten

Dissertations - ALL

We investigate several problems in the theory of convergence spaces: generalization of Kolmogorov separation from topological spaces to convergence spaces, representation of reflexive digraphs as convergence spaces, construction of differential calculi on convergence spaces, mereology on convergence spaces, and construction of a universal homogeneous pretopological space. First, we generalize Kolmogorov separation from topological spaces to convergence spaces; we then study properties of Kolmogorov spaces. Second, we develop a theory of reflexive digraphs as convergence spaces, which we then specialize to Cayley graphs. Third, we conservatively extend the concept of differential from the spaces of classical analysis to arbitrary convergence spaces; …

Prospective Elementary Teacher Mathematics Content Knowledge: An Introduction, Christine Browning, Eva Thanheiser, Alden J. Edson, Patrick Kimani, Dana Olanoff, Jennifer Tobias, Ian Whitacre

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This Special Issue on the mathematical content knowledge of prospective elementary teachers (PTs) provides summaries of the extant peer-­‐reviewed research literature from 1978 to 2012 on PTs’ content knowledge across several mathematical topics, specifically whole number and operations, fractions, decimals, geometry and measurement, and algebra. Each topic-­‐specific summary of the literature is presented in a self-­‐contained paper, written by a subgroup of a larger Working Group that has collaborated across several years, resulting in this Special Issue sharing the final work. The authors hope this summative look at prospective teacher content knowledge will be of interest to the mathematics education …

Preface, Eva Thanheiser, Christine Browning

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Bharath Sriraman noted in his Editorial for Vol. 10, nos. 1–2 that the first issue of The Mathematics Enthusiast (known then as The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast) published in April 2004 was “the result of four idealistic elementary school teachers believing in the mission of this journal and writing about their attempts to reconcile the mathematics content they were learning in a mathematics for elementary school teachers course with existing mathematics education research found in practitioners’ journals as well as standards imposed by institutions’ framing policy” (p. 2). Ten years later we return to a similar focus.

Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary Mathematics: A Focus On Whole-Number Concepts And Operations, Eva Thanheiser, Ian Whitacre, George Roy

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This report represents part of a recent effort to summarize the state of knowledge of prospective elementary teachers’ (PTs’) mathematics content knowledge and the development thereof. Extensive reviews of the research literature were conducted by a recent PME-­‐NA Working Group across various content areas. This report focuses on whole number and operations. Research in this area is scarce. What we do know from the literature is that PTs’ knowledge of whole number and operations is insufficient and in need of improvement. PTs reason about whole numbers and operations in ways that are tied to the standard algorithms. At the same …

Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary Mathematics: A Focus On Algebra, Krista Strand, Briana Mills

The Mathematics Enthusiast

As part of a recent effort to summarize research-­‐based knowledge of prospective elementary school teachers’ (PTs) mathematical content knowledge, this paper summarizes research literature on PTs’ knowledge of algebra, focusing on the range of years from 1998 through 2012. The 21 papers included in this summary focus on a broad range of topics within algebra, such as (a) producing, representing, and justifying generalizations; (b) interpreting and using algebraic symbols; (c) solving algebraic word problems; and (d) understanding functions. Looking across this body of research, three themes are identified: (1) PTs generally have strong procedural skills and can make mathematically sound …

Mathematical Content Knowledge For Teaching Elementary Mathematics: A Focus On Geometry And Measurement, Christine Browning, Alden J. Edson, Patrick Kimani, Fatma Aslan-Tutak

The Mathematics Enthusiast

This paper summarizes the extant peer-­‐reviewed research on PTs’ understanding of geometry and measurement, focusing on a wide variety of topics within these content domains. When looking across the 26 studies reviewed, findings span a variety of content topics, providing little depth in either the geometry or measurement content domain. However, collective findings do indicate PTs’ overall conceptions in geometry and measurement to be limited and weak, with PTs relying on memorized procedural processes. Some evidence indicates that cognitive development, along with spatial visualization skills, plays a greater role in learning geometry than memory skills. In addition, the van Hiele …

Dynamics For The Compound Burgers-Kdv Equation, Xiangqian Zheng

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In this thesis, we study the Two-Dimensional Burgers-Korteweg-de Vries (2D-BKdV) equation and Two-Dimensional Compound Burgers-Korteweg-de Vries (2D-Compound BKdV) by analyzing the first integral equation, which indicates that under some particular conditions, the 2D-BKdV equation and 2D-Compound BKdV have exact traveling wave solutions. By using the elliptic integral and some transformations, traveling wave solution to the 2D-BKdV equation and 2DCompound BKdV are expressed explicitly.

Balanced Modular Parameterizations, Esteban J. Melendez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In this thesis, we show that Classical representations for certain modular forms have symmetric form. These symmetric formulations are interpreted in terms of more general balanced homogeneous polynomial representations resulting from a permutative action of Hecke congruence subgroups on quotients of theta functions. For prime levels between 5 and 19, sets of permuted theta quotients are constructed that generate the corresponding vector spaces of modular forms of weight one.