Other Mathematics Commons^™

New Effective Transformational Computational Methods, Jun Zhang, Ruzong Fan, Fangyang Shen, Junyi Tu

Publications and Research

Mathematics serves as a fundamental intelligent theoretic basis for computation, and mathematical analysis is very useful to develop computational methods to solve various problems in science and engineering. Integral transforms such as Laplace Transform have been playing an important role in computational methods. In this paper, we will introduce Sumudu Transform in a new computational approach, in which effective computational methods will be developed and implemented. Such computational methods are straightforward to understand, but powerful to incorporate into computational science to solve different problems automatically. We will provide computational analysis and essentiality by surveying and summarizing some related recent works, …

On The Spectrum Of Quaquaversal Operators, Josiah Sugarman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1998 Charles Radin and John Conway introduced the Quaquaversal Tiling. A three dimensional hierarchical tiling with the property that the orientations of its tiles approach a uniform distribution faster than what is possible for hierarchical tilings in two dimensions. The distribution of orientations is controlled by the spectrum of a certain Hecke operator, which we refer to as the Quaquaversal Operator. For example, by showing that the largest eigenvalue has multiplicity equal to one, Charles Radin and John Conway showed that the orientations of this tiling approach a uniform distribution. In 2008, Bourgain and Gamburd showed that this operator …

An Explicit Construction Of Sheaves In Context, Tyler A. Bryson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This document details the body of theory necessary to explicitly construct sheaves of sets on a site together with the development of supporting material necessary to connect sheaf theory with the wider mathematical contexts in which it is applied. Of particular interest is a novel presentation of the plus construction suitable for direct application to a site without first passing to the generated grothendieck topology.

Mth 125 - Modeling With Exponential Functions, Stivi Manoku

Open Educational Resources

The file includes a variety of problems that emphasize the importance of modeling exponential growth and/or radioactive decay. Through different exercises and problems, the assignment goal is to improve their comprehension of exponential functions and hone their problem-solving abilities.

A Stronger Strong Schottky Lemma For Euclidean Buildings, Michael E. Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We provide a criterion for two hyperbolic isometries of a Euclidean building to generate a free group of rank two. In particular, we extend the application of a Strong Schottky Lemma to buildings given by Alperin, Farb and Noskov. We then use this extension to obtain an infinite family of matrices that generate a free group of rank two. In doing so, we also introduce an algorithm that terminates in finite time if the lemma is applicable for pairs of certain kinds of matrices acting on the Euclidean building for the special linear group over certain discretely valued fields.

Prime Factors: America’S Prioritization Of Literacy Over Numeracy And Its Relationship To Systemic Inequity, Troy Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For much of American history, literacy has been prioritized in K-12 education and society, at large, at the expense of numeracy. This lack of numerical emphasis has established innumeracy as an American cultural norm that has resulted in America not producing a sufficient number of numerate citizens, and ranking poorly on mathematical performance in international comparisons. This paper investigates the decisions and circumstances that led to this under prioritization, along with the public and cultural impact of said actions. Toward this end, literature regarding contemporary and historical influences on American mathematics education (e.g., civic, policy, and parental) was reviewed. The …

Mathematics For Liberal Arts (Ma301), Lecture Notes, Lyubomir I. Boyadzhiev

Open Educational Resources

These lecture notes are designed to provide the students majoring in the liberal arts with an understanding and appreciation of mathematics as a lively, interesting, and surprisingly rich human activity with many fascinating applications. The text, emphasizing strongly intuitive thinking and visualization, is a collection of topics chosen to show the open-minded readers that:

• The connection between the mathematics presented in the course and down-to-earth, concrete real-life problems is transparent and immediate.
• Modern mathematical discoveries do not have to be the exclusive province of professional mathematicians.
• There is an important aesthetic component in mathematics, and just as in art and …

Graph-Theoretic Partitioning Of Rnas And Classification Of Pseudoknots-Ii, Louis Petingi

Publications and Research

Dual graphs have been applied to model RNA secondary structures with pseudoknots, or intertwined base pairs. In previous works, a linear-time algorithm was introduced to partition dual graphs into maximally connected components called blocks and determine whether each block contains a pseudoknot or not. As pseudoknots can not be contained into two different blocks, this characterization allow us to efficiently isolate smaller RNA fragments and classify them as pseudoknotted or pseudoknot-free regions, while keeping these sub-structures intact. Moreover we have extended the partitioning algorithm by classifying a pseudoknot as either recursive or non-recursive in order to continue with our research …

Interfacial Dynamics And Ionic Transport Of Radiologic Contrast Media In Carbohydrate Matrix: Utility And Limits Of X-Ray Imaging, Lin Mousa, Hayley Sanchez, Subhendra Sarkar, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

Hello, our names are Lin Mousa and Hayley Sanchez, this semester we participated in a research project dedicated to analyzing the interactions of contrast media with the molecular components of fruits to compare how they would react with the human brain. This project involved the injection of fruits with varying contrasts and the imaging of the diffusion and interactions of the contrast within the fruits with X-rays. With setup technical parameters on the x-ray equipment images were taken with identical setups at an hourly rate for several days. The final results of this experiment indicated that contrasts such as Gadolinium …

Application Of Randomness In Finance, Jose Sanchez, Daanial Ahmad, Satyanand Singh

Publications and Research

Brownian Motion which is also considered to be a Wiener process and can be thought of as a random walk. In our project we had briefly discussed the fluctuations of financial indices and related it to Brownian Motion and the modeling of Stock prices.

Floor Plan Assignment In Elementary Mathematics Education, Tunde Jakab

Open Educational Resources

In this upper elementary mathematics education assignment, the prospective teachers gain hands-on experience in measuring distances in feet and inches, calculating areas, and converting distance and area measurements. Moreover, they solve a real-life situation by choosing the most economical tiles for their kitchen. This last part (3) of the assignment develops critical thinking and expressing one's thought processes. Part 3 can be used as an in-class discussion, which further promotes reasoning skills.

Interdisciplinary Thinking: Financial Literacy Crosses Disciplinary Boundaries, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Financial literacy is ideally suited to be integrated into mathematics courses and taught in an interdisciplinary manner. Students learn best and are motivated when tackling real-world meaningful questions. This article shares how elementary mathematics was applied to better understand the debate about raising the minimum wage and the United States National Debt. To serve as a guide for other teachers who wish to incorporate financial literacy into their mathematics courses and take an interdisciplinary approach, this article suggests readings, data sets, and pedagogical practices. Students were engaged and enthusiastic to work on problems that challenged their thinking about financial issues.

Role Of Influence In Complex Networks, Nur Dean

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Game theory is a wide ranging research area; that has attracted researchers from various fields. Scientists have been using game theory to understand the evolution of cooperation in complex networks. However, there is limited research that considers the structure and connectivity patterns in networks, which create heterogeneity among nodes. For example, due to the complex ways most networks are formed, it is common to have some highly “social” nodes, while others are highly isolated. This heterogeneity is measured through metrics referred to as “centrality” of nodes. Thus, the more “social” nodes tend to also have higher centrality.

In this thesis, …

Spectral Sequences For Almost Complex Manifolds, Qian Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent work, two new cohomologies were introduced for almost complex manifolds: the so-called J-cohomology and N-cohomology [CKT17]. For the case of integrable (complex) structures, the former cohomology was already considered in [DGMS75], and the latter agrees with de Rham cohomology. In this dissertation, using ideas from [CW18], we introduce spectral sequences for these two cohomologies, showing the two cohomologies have natural bigradings. We show the spectral sequence for the J-cohomology converges at the second page whenever the almost complex structure is integrable, and explain how both fit in a natural diagram involving Bott-Chern cohomology and the Frolicher spectral sequence. …

At The Interface Of Algebra And Statistics, Tai-Danae Bradley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis takes inspiration from quantum physics to investigate mathematical structure that lies at the interface of algebra and statistics. The starting point is a passage from classical probability theory to quantum probability theory. The quantum version of a probability distribution is a density operator, the quantum version of marginalizing is an operation called the partial trace, and the quantum version of a marginal probability distribution is a reduced density operator. Every joint probability distribution on a finite set can be modeled as a rank one density operator. By applying the partial trace, we obtain reduced density operators whose diagonals …

Trigonometry: A Brief Conversation, Carolyn D. King Phd, Tam Evelyn, Fei Ye Phd, Beata Ewa Carvajal

Open Educational Resources

These five units are specifically tailored to foster the mastery of a few selected trigonometry topics that comprise the one credit MA-121 Elementary Trigonometry course. Each unit introduces the topic, provides space for practice, but more importantly, provides opportunities for students to reflect on the work in order to deepen their conceptual understanding.

These units have also been assigned to students of other courses such as pre-calculus and calculus as a review of trigonometric basics essential to those courses. This is the second edition of the materials. Units 4 and 5 have been edited to reflect suggestions from instructors who …

Understanding The Impact Of Peer-Led Workshops On Student Learning, Afolabi Ibitoye, Nadia Kennedy, Armando Cosme

Publications and Research

As students we often wonder why some subjects are easy to understand and requires not much effort in terms of re-reading the material, for us to grasp what it entails. One subject seems to remain elusive and uneasy for a vast majority of learners at all levels of education; that subject is Mathematics, it is one subject that most learners finds difficult even after doubling the amount of time spent on studying the material. My intention is to explore ways to make Mathematics easier for other students using feedback from students enrolled in NSF mathematics peer leading workshops, and use …

Elements Of Calculus 1, Nur Dean

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Coincidence Of Bargaining Solutions And Rationalizability In Epistemic Games, Todd Stambaugh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1: In 1950, John Nash proposed the Bargaining Problem, for which a solution is a function that assigns to each space of possible utility assignments a single point in the space, in some sense representing the ’fair’ deal for the agents involved. Nash provided a solution of his own, and several others have been presented since then, including a notable solution by Ehud Kalai and Meir Smorodinsky. In chapter 1, a complete account is given for the conditions under which the two solutions will coincide for two player bargaining scenarios.

Chapter 2: In the same year, Nash …

Case Study Of Undergraduate Research Projects In Vector Analysis, Alexander Vaninsky, Willy Baez Lara, Madieng Diao, Analilia Mendez

Publications and Research

This paper presents two examples of the undergraduate research projects in vector analysis conducted under the first author’s supervision at one of the community colleges that is an integral part of a large city university. The projects were accomplished by the students pursuing associated degrees in engineering, during their sophomore year. One project was to obtain an explicit formula for the curvature of a curve in plane defined implicitly in rectangular or polar coordinates. Another project was aimed to develop an alternative procedure for finding potential function for a vector field in space based on simultaneous integration. Participation in these …

Arithmetic | Algebra Homework, Samar Elhitti, Ariane Masuda, Lin Zhou

Open Educational Resources

Arithmetic | Algebra Homework book is a static version of the WeBWork online homework assignments that accompany the textbook Arithmetic | Algebra for the developmental math courses MAT 0630 and MAT 0650 at New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

Arithmetic | Algebra, Samar Elhitti, Marianna Bonanome, Holly Carley, Thomas Tradler, Lin Zhou

Open Educational Resources

Arithmetic | Algebra provides a customized open-source textbook for the math developmental students at New York City College of Technology. The book consists of short chapters, addressing essential concepts necessary to successfully proceed to credit-level math courses. Each chapter provides several solved examples and one unsolved “Exit Problem”. Each chapter is also supplemented by its own WeBWork online homework assignment. The book can be used in conjunction with WeBWork for homework (online) or with the Arithmetic | Algebra Homework handbook (traditional). The content in the book, WeBWork and the homework handbook are also aligned to prepare students for the CUNY …

A Novel Approach For Library Materials Acquisition Using Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization, Daniel A. Sabol

Publications and Research

The academic library materials acquisition problem is a challenge for librarian, since library cannot get enough funding from universities and the price of materials inflates greatly. In this paper, we analyze an integer mathematical model by considering the selection of acquired materials to maximize the average preference value as well as the budget execution rate under practical restrictions. The objective is to improve the Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (DPSO) algorithm by adding a Simulate Annealing algorithm to reduce premature convergence. Furthermore, the algorithm is implemented in multiple threaded environment. The experimental results show the efficiency of this approach.

A Modularized Tablet-Based Approach To Preparation For Remedial Mathematics, Kenneth A. Parker

Publications and Research

Basic arithmetic forms the foundation of the math courses that students will face in their undergraduate careers. It is therefore crucial that students have a solid understanding of these fundamental concepts. At an open- access university offering both two-year and four-year degrees, incoming freshmen who were identified as lacking in basic arithmetic skills were engaged in an experimental technology-enhanced workshop designed to provide them with a deeper understanding of arithmetic prior to their initial remedial coursework. Customized online content was created specifically for this experiment, and the first implementation (n=27) yielded statistically significant improvement, not only from pretest to post- …

Multiple Problem-Solving Strategies Provide Insight Into Students’ Understanding Of Open-Ended Linear Programming Problems, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

Open-ended questions that can be solved using different strategies help students learn and integrate content, and provide teachers with greater insights into students’ unique capabilities and levels of understanding. This article provides a problem that was modified to allow for multiple approaches. Students tended to employ high-powered, complex, familiar solution strategies rather than simpler, more intuitive strategies, which suggests that students might need more experience working with informal solution methods. During the semester, by incorporating open-ended questions, I gained valuable feedback, was able to better model real-world problems, challenge students with different abilities, and strengthen students’ problem solving skills.

Calculus For Everyone, Sandra Kingan, Brooklyn College Library And Academic It

Open Educational Resources

Professor Kingan’s motivation for writing her free Calculus I textbook was to help address the departments high failure rates in Calculus. Along with another CUNY initiative to offer Calculus workshops in advance of taking the course, Kingan’s concise textbook in Calculus I offers students inside and outside of CUNY an opportunity to prepare for Calculus I at their own pace. She also believes that by providing free access to this material she could help to overcome some of the inequity students experience when Calculus is not offered in their high school. The textbook was written specifically for this pilot project. …

A Primer For Mathematical Modeling, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

With the implementation of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommendations and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, modeling has moved to the forefront of K-12 education. Modeling activities not only reinforce purposeful problem-solving skills, they also connect the mathematics students learn in school with the mathematics they will use outside of school. Instructors have found mathematical modeling difficult to teach. To successfully incorporate modeling activities I believe that curricular changes should be accompanied by professional development for curriculum developers, classroom teachers, and higher education professionals. This article serves as an introduction to modeling by …

The Mathematics Portfolio: An Alternative Tool To Evaluate Students’ Progress, Marla A. Sole

Publications and Research

This article describes the need for more thorough and varied forms of assessment to evaluate students’ level of understanding in mathematics. Portfolios are one type of assessment tool that, when added to a teacher’s repertoire can improve students’ comprehension and retention and enable students to monitor their own progress and to take more responsibility for their own learning. Portfolio assignments can also help students and teachers to detect and remedy weaknesses and misunderstandings and can increase students’ self-confidence in mathematics. This article discusses what a portfolio is, gives an example of a unit portfolio used in an undergraduate Finite Mathematics …