Math
398 -- Math in the City
Fall 2006
Instructor:
Petronela Radu
(Office: Avery Hall 239
Phone:
472-9130)
E-mail: pradu@math.unl.edu
Office Hours: 11:30
- 1:00 pm Mondays and Wednesdays or by appointment
Schedule of
classes:
MWF 1:30
-- 2:20 Avery Hall 111
Final Exam -
November 27, 12:30-2:30 - Review topics
Info about the course:
This is a modeling course offered to math and non-math majors and it is
run in collaboration with local
businesses, research or administrative centers in town. The
course has two components: one which revolves
around the
lectures (the homeworks
and the exam will be based on this material) and the second is the project.
In order to
complete the course you need to
perform well on each component.
On Mondays and Wednesdays we will have lectures which
will
cover topics
from Matrix Algebra, Statistics,
Differential Equations, and Maple. These topics will concern modeling
issues from different areas of science.
On Fridays we
will meet and discuss your work on the project.
The mathematical content of the course is diverse. The difficulty
of the topics will be perceived differently
by students; each of you will discover that it depends a lot on your
background, the way you think and
communicate in mathematics.
The discussions will be more beneficial if you keep up with the
material on a
day-to-day basis. Do not hesitate to ask
questions in or outside the class whenever in doubt about an
argument, notation, etc. At the end of this course
a successful student will not only have performed very
well on the
tasks during the semester, but s/he will be able to
approach other real life problems that involve
mathematics with more confidence.
The course is partially supported by a University ITLE grant through
December 2007.
Maple: Examples (UPDATED) Part 1
(integration, differentiation, plots,
solving DEs, linalg, iterations)
Examples Part 2 (surfaces and curves,
iterations)
Homework #4 -problem 2 - Discrete
Dynamical Systems (origin=repellor)
Projects: This semester there
will be two projects:
-- Traffic in Lincoln
- This project will be conducted with the help of Mark Lutjeharms from
the Schemmer
Associates and it concerns the traffic in the city
of Lincoln. Some of the questions
we
will look at are: How
does
traffic on one street
affect the traffic in an intersection? Derive a relationship between
the
density of
traffic and the
speed of the
traffic for different areas inside and outside the city limits. Given
data
for traffic
at a given time, determine
the traffic at later
times on a highway with no entrances or exits. If
time permits,
we will look at additional topics,
like efficiency for
fuel consumption.
City of
Lincoln Traffic Operations
The 2002-2003 City Traffic
Report by the Schemmer
Associates pdf
Data 1 (zip file)
-- Housing in
Lincoln - During the last decade prices for houses have risen
nationwide with a double digit
increases every year in some areas. This
appreciation has been observed for
the Lincoln real
estate market,
but so far this increase has not been quantified.
Using
statistical analysis (and the SPSS
package) students
will work to answer
the following questions: How can the price of a house be computed
(ok,
approximated) knowing the location, square footage, size
of the lot,
etc.? By how much did home
values appreciate in Lincoln over the
past ten years? This project will be run in collaboration
with
Michelle Slack from the Lincoln
County Assessor.
Guidelines for grading the project:
20 points for the mathematical content - correct
formulas and arguments, complete explanations
10 points for good/steady progress during the
semester (accomplishing the tasks on time, meeting with your
colleagues every week to
work on the project, full participation with remarks and questions
during the
Friday meetings will
invariably
lead to a very good turn out for your efforts)
15 points for esthetical aspect (use of graphs,
diagrams, colors) and organization
5 points for presenting the novelty and the
significance of the work (any research that was done on the
subject, new methods,
programming skills that you learnt while working on the project,
emphasize the
importance of the
work).
Total: 50 points
Each project should have 3 parts. The Introduction will
contain a project description, an outline of the
methods used, and the significance of the work. In the
Main Body
you will include the work: a set-up
of the problem, the hypothesis, the arguments, and the
steps taken
to solve the problem. The
conclusions will contain the final results and their
interpretation. All participants in a
group project will
get the same grade, so it is important that each person in
the group participate fully and equally.
References: For the material
taught in class you may use in addition to the notes
given in class, any
textbook in Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and
Statistics.
You
may have to find and read
references for the project that you will choose to work on
during the semester.
Homework: The
homework will be announced in class and posted on the web. You are
encouraged
to discuss the problems with your colleagues, but you have to
write your
own
solutions.
Homework 1 (due September 18)
Homework 2 (due October 2)
Homework 3 (due October 20)
Homework 4 (due November 1)
Homework 5 (due November 17)
Oral
Presentations.
Each student will give at least two oral presentations. The first one
will be
an individual presentation in front of her/his team members on a
topic closely
related to the project.
The second presentation will be a collective effort and it will
be done at the end of
the semester. At
that time each group will put
together a poster and a slide presentation of their work. These group
presentations will be scheduled on the last week of classes and
will be
free to the public (faculty,
graduate, and undergraduate students will
be invited).
Exam: There will be
a two-hour
in-class exam for this course covering the topics discussed during the
lectures.
Assessment: Your
final
grade will be computed based on the follwing scheme.
15 % Homeworks
50 % Project
25 % Exam
10 % Oral Presentations
Honor Code: Some of
your work during the course will be done individually, while some will
be
collaborative. I expect you to acknowledge the help you have
received from your
colleagues, outside
friends, or me on homework assignments. I will assume that you
will adhere to the UNL
Policy on
Academic Honesty.