Mathematics Commons^™

Being Reasonable: Using Brainteasers To Develop Reasoning Ability In Humanistic Mathematics Courses, Gary Stogsdill

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Developing reasoning ability is often cited as one of the principal justifications of a mathematics requirement for liberal arts undergraduates. Humanistic math courses have become recognized as a paradigm for liberal arts mathematics, but such courses may not provide the opportunity to develop reasoning ability. The author describes his procedure for using brainteasers to promote reasoning in a humanistic math course for liberal arts undergraduates.

Joining ``The Mathematician's Delirium To The Poet's Logic'': Mathematical Literature And Literary Mathematics, Rita Capezzi, Christine Kinsey

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper describes our team-taught interdisciplinary mathematics and literature course, Mathematical Literature and Literary Mathematics, which invites students to consider Raymond Queneau's challenge: "Why shouldn't one demand a certain effort on the reader's part? Everything is always explained to him. He must eventually tire of being treated with such contempt.'' We study works by Berge, Borges, Calvino, Perec, Queneau, Robbe-Grillet and Stoppard, among others. From a literary critical perspective, the course highlights the play of language rather than the primacy of meaning. We choose texts where mathematical concepts are subjects or structuring elements of the literature, and ideally both. …

Some Effects Of The Human Genome Project On The Erdős Collaboration Graph, Chris Fields

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The Human Genome Project introduced large-scale collaborations involving dozens to hundreds of scientists into biology. It also created a pressing need to solve discrete mathematics problems involving tens of thousands of elements. In this paper, we use minimal path lengths in the Erdős Collaboration Graph between prominent individual researchers as a measure of the distance between disciplines, and we show that the Human Genome Project brought laboratory biology as a whole closer to mathematics. We also define a novel graph reduction method and a metric that emphasizes the robustness of collaborative connections between researchers; these can facilitate the analysis of …

Thin Sequences And The Gram Matrix, Pamela Gorkin, John E. Mccarthy, Sandra Pott, Brett D. Wick

Mathematics Faculty Research

We provide a new proof of Volberg’s Theorem characterizing thin interpolating sequences as those for which the Gram matrix associated to the normalized reproducing kernels is a compact perturbation of the identity. In the same paper, Volberg characterized sequences for which the Gram matrix is a compact perturbation of a unitary as well as those for which the Gram matrix is a Schatten-2 class perturbation of a unitary operator. We extend this characterization from 2 to p, where 2 p ≤∞.

How Do They Know It Is A Parallelogram? Analysing Geometric Discourse At Van Hiele Level 3, Sasha Wang, Margaret Kinzel

Mathematics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, we introduce Sfard's discursive framework and use it to investigate prospective teachers' geometric discourse in the context of quadrilaterals. In particular, we focus on describing and analysing two participants' use of mathematical words and substantiation routines related to parallelograms and their properties at van Hiele level 3 thinking. Our findings suggest that a single van Hiele level of thinking encompasses a range of complexity of reasoning and differences in discourse and thus a deeper investigation of students' mathematical thinking within assigned van Hiele levels is warranted.

Agriculture Trade And Protectionism., Debasmita Basu Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Ever since the inception of the World Trade Organization free trade in agricultural goods has been difficult to implement. The developed countries, who are otherwise active proponents of free trade, seem reluctant to remove the subsidies from the agricultural sector, making way for unfair competition against the poor developing nations. The Common Agricultural Program (CAP) spending of around ¿58 bn each year in the European countries as agricultural subsidy has always been subject to controversy.The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has also devised a variety of programs to supplement the farmers’ income, support commodity market price and manage supply. The …

Reconstruction Of Structured Quadratic Pencils From Eigenvalues On Ellipses And Parabolas, R. Ibragimov, Vesselin Vatchev

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

In the present paper we study the reconstruction of a structured quadratic pencil from eigenvalues distributed on ellipses or parabolas. A quadratic pencil is a square matrix polynomial

QP(λ) = M λ²+Cλ +K,

where M, C, and K are real square matrices. The approach developed in the paper is based on the theory of orthogonal polynomials on the real line. The results can be applied to more general distribution of eigenvalues. The problem with added single eigenvector is also briefly discussed. As an illustration of the reconstruction method, the eigenvalue problem …

Review Of The Joy Of X: A Guided Tour Of Math, From One To Infinity By Steven Strogatz, Michael T. Catalano

Numeracy

Strogatz, Steven. The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, (New York, NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). 316 pp. ISBN 978-0-547-51765-0

The Joy of x: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity, by Steven Strogatz, is an engaging and example-filled argument for mathematics as a valuable and enjoyable activity. The thirty chapters are divided into six parts, entitled Numbers, Relationships, Shapes, Change, Data, and Frontiers. The discussion ranges from intuitive explanations of basic concepts such as place value, the four arithmetic operations, percentage increase and decrease, and solving equations, to “higher” levels …

How Does One Design Or Evaluate A Course In Quantitative Reasoning?, Bernard L. Madison

Numeracy

In the absence of generally accepted content standards and with little evidence on the learning for long-term retrieval and transfer, how does one design or evaluate a course in quantitative reasoning (QR)? This is a report on one way to do so. The subject QR course, which has college algebra as a prerequisite and has been taught for 8 years, is being modified slightly to be offered as an alternative to college algebra. One modification is adding a significant formal writing component. As the modification occurs, the current course and the modified one are judged according to six sets of …

Reduced Major Axis Regression: Teaching Alternatives To Least Squares, William V. Harper

Mathematics Faculty Scholarship

The theoretical underpinnings of standard least squares regression analysis are based on the assumption that the independent variable (often thought of as x) is measured without error as a design variable. The dependent variable (often labeled y) is modeled as having uncertainty or error. Both independent and dependent measurements may have multiple sources of error. Thus the underlying least squares regression assumptions can be violated. Reduced Major Axis (RMA) regression is specifically formulated to handle errors in both the x and y variables. It is an excellent topic to teach students the importance of understanding the assumptions underlying the statistical …

P_4-Decomposability In Regular Graphs And Multigraphs, David Joshua Mendell

Theses and Dissertations

The main objective of this thesis is to review and expand the study of graph decomposability. An H-decomposition of a graph G=(V,E) is a partitioning of the edge set, $E$, into edge-disjoint isomorphic copies of a subgraph H. In particular we focus on the decompositions of graphs into paths. We prove that a 2,4 mutligraph with maximum multiplicity 2 admits a C_2,C_3-free Euler tour (and thus, a decomposition into paths of length 3 if it has size a multiple of 3) if and only if it avoids a set of 15 forbidden structures. We also prove that …

Exact Tests For Singular Network Data, Ian H. Dinwoodie, Kruti Pandya

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We propose methodology for exact statistical tests of hypotheses for models of network dynamics. The methodology formulates Markovian exponential families, then uses sequential importance sampling to compute expectations within basins of attraction and within level sets of a sufficient statistic for an over-dispersion model. Comparisons of hypotheses can be done conditional on basins of attraction. Examples are presented.

What Is Higher Mathematics? Why Is It So Hard To Interpret? What Can Be Done?, John Tabak

Journal of Interpretation

Courses and seminars in higher mathematics are some of the most challenging assignments faced by academic interpreters. Difficulties interpreting higher mathematics can adversely impact the academic and professional aspirations of deaf mathematics students and professionals. This paper discusses the nature of higher mathematics with the goal of identifying what distinguishes higher mathematics from other subjects; it then reviews the history of attempts to sign/interpret higher mathematics with particular attention to current challenges associated with expressing higher mathematics in sign. The final part of the paper discusses strategies for more effectively expressing higher mathematics in American Sign Language.

Existence Of Positive Solutions For P(X)-Laplacian Equations With A Singular Nonlinear Term, Jingjing Liu, Qihu Zhang, Chunshan Zhao

Mathematical Sciences: Faculty Publications

In this article, we study the existence of positive solutions for the p(x)-Laplacian Dirichlet problem −∆_p(x)u = λf(x, u) in a bounded domain Ω ⊂ R^N. The singular nonlinearity term f is allowed to be either f(x, s) → +∞, or f(x, s) → +∞ as s → 0+ for each x ∈ Ω. Our main results generalize the results in [15] from constant exponents to variable exponents. In particular, we give the asymptotic behavior of solutions of a simpler equation which is useful for finding supersolutions of differential equations with variable exponents, which is of independent …

Recursive Methods In Number Theory, Combinatorial Graph Theory, And Probability, Jonathan Burns

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recursion is a fundamental tool of mathematics used to define, construct, and analyze mathematical objects. This work employs induction, sieving, inversion, and other recursive methods to solve a variety of problems in the areas of algebraic number theory, topological and combinatorial graph theory, and analytic probability and statistics. A common theme of recursively defined functions, weighted sums, and cross-referencing sequences arises in all three contexts, and supplemented by sieving methods, generating functions, asymptotics, and heuristic algorithms.

In the area of number theory, this work generalizes the sieve of Eratosthenes to a sequence of polynomial values called polynomial-value sieving. In the …

Hydrodynamics Of Diatom Chains And Semiflexible Fibres, Hoa Nguyen, L. Fauci

Mathematics Faculty Research

Diatoms are non-motile, unicellular phytoplankton that have the ability to form colonies in the form of chains. Depending upon the species of diatoms and the linking structures that hold the cells together, these chains can be quite stiff or very flexible. Recently, the bending rigidities of some species of diatom chains have been quantified. In an effort to understand the role of flexibility in nutrient uptake and aggregate formation, we begin by developing a three-dimensional model of the coupled elastic-hydrodynamic system of a diatom chain moving in an incompressible fluid. We find that simple beam theory does a good job …

The Geometry Of Curves, Ye Lim Seo

Posters, Presentations, and Papers

The structure of helix is a significant field in the differential geometry studies, and it is profoundly studied and still studied over the period. A curve of constant slope or general helix is defined by the property that its tangent vector field makes a constant angle with a fixed straight line (the axis of the general helix) in Euclidean space.

A prevalent result stated by M.A. Lancret in 1802 and first proved by B. de Saint Venant in 1845 is: A necessary and sufficient condition that a curve be a general helix is that the ratio of curvature to torsion …

Linear Convergence Of Stochastic Iterative Greedy Algorithms With Sparse Constraints, Nam Nguyen, Deanna Needell, Tina Woolf

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Motivated by recent work on stochastic gradient descent methods, we develop two stochastic variants of greedy algorithms for possibly non-convex optimization problems with sparsity constraints. We prove linear convergence in expectation to the solution within a specified tolerance. This generalized framework applies to problems such as sparse signal recovery in compressed sensing, low-rank matrix recovery, and co-variance matrix estimation, giving methods with provable convergence guarantees that often outperform their deterministic counterparts. We also analyze the settings where gradients and projections can only be computed approximately, and prove the methods are robust to these approximations. We include many numerical experiments which …

Lattices From Elliptic Curves Over Finite Fields, Lenny Fukshansky, Hiren Maharaj

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In their well known book Tsfasman and Vladut introduced a construction of a family of function field lattices from algebraic curves over finite fields, which have asymptotically good packing density in high dimensions. In this paper we study geometric properties of lattices from this construction applied to elliptic curves. In particular, we determine the generating sets, conditions for well-roundedness and a formula for the number of minimal vectors. We also prove a bound on the covering radii of these lattices, which improves on the standard inequalities.

Global Dynamics Of Triangular Maps, Eduardo C. Balreira, Saber Elaydi, Rafael Luís

Mathematics Faculty Research

We consider continuous triangular maps on I^N, where I is a compact interval in the Euclidean space R. We show, under some conditions, that the orbit of every point in a triangular map converges to a fixed point if and only if there is no periodic orbit of prime period two. As a consequence we obtain a result on global stability, namely, if there are no periodic orbits of prime period 2 and the triangular map has a unique fixed point, then the fixed point is globally asymptotically stable. We also discuss examples and applications of our …