MATH 480: Senior Seminar in Mathematics

Syllabus and course description
Stylesheet giving expectations for writing
University Writing Center

Day-by-day goings-on:

January 11th. First day of class! We spend some time discussing the syllabus and expectations for the course.
January 18th. We will have a discussion on finding and evaluating sources, and you'll have a chance to complete a scavenger hunt. Also, here is a prompt for your annotated bibliography, due on February 1st, and one for your paper, a first draft of which is due on February 8th.
January 25th. Faculty Talk 1: Tom Beatty, Survival statistics: They are probably trying to lie to you
February 1st. Faculty Talk 2: Mark McClure. (Your annotated bibliography is due on this date.)
February 8th. Faculty Talk 3: Greg Boudreaux. (A rough draft of your paper is due on this date.)
February 15th. We will complete an in-class abstract writing exercise and a peer-review of your papers' first drafts.
February 22nd. Student Talks 1:
- Hilary Arthur: The impossibility of motion and the history of infinity
- Michael Friedrich: Just as simple as simplex can be: An introduction to linear programming
- Halcyon Garrett: The role of modular arithmetic in public-key cryptosystems
February 29th. Student Talks 2:
- Kristina Bender: The Knight's tour: Magical paths for the chessboard, puzzles, and literature
- Kristi Kiser: Stochastic modelling of a serial killer
- Tim Sawicki: Smith numbers
March 7th. Spring break: NO CLASS!
March 14th. Student Talks 3:
- Rachel Cook: Are you smarter than a Singaporean 8th grader?
- John Frimmel: Defining the Fibonacci numbers anonymously: A primer on the lambda calculus
- Caity Veraar: Euclid's proof of the volume of a tetrahedron and the importance of infinity
March 21st. Student Talks 4:
- Meredith Houck: Using network theory to build the product space
- Asa Jones: Surface interpolation using thin-plate splines
March 28th. Student Talks 5:
- Mark Bundy: How best to survive a duel
- Devyn McNicoll: Prediction with least error
- Kyle Silva Calculus is great, sure...but do we need it?
April 4th. Student Talks 6:
April 11th. Student Talks 7:
- Meghan Boutwell: The Singaporean mathematics curriculum: Why they're on top?
- Dustin Nichols: Are wind turbines a viable alternative?
- Rulon Nicholson: An introduction to the damped harmonic oscillator
April 18th. Student Talks 8:
- Eric Gerber: Advanced baseball statistics, Brad Pitt, and "The Bikini Problem"
- Alex Goode: Multiple linear regression analysis: An example in public health research
- Sara Russell: Sampling with Shel Silverstein