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Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications

umap is required, and journal is required

Odds , Wagers , and the Horses

Although the origins of gambling are not recorded, there is evidence of it in the histories of most peoples. Dice were invented by the Ancient Egyptians, sports betting was common throughout the Greek and Roman empires, and carnival games were popular...

Constructing Power Lines

Power lines are constructed by stringing the conductors from support to support in a continuous manner and then adjusting the tension in the wire in each span (gap between poles or towers) consecutively. This tension is maintained by tying the...

Fever

Increasingly, students of biology, natural resources, health sciences and other applied life sciences are taking calculus. Such students appreciate biological applications, especially since most textbooks rely on a standard set of examples common to...

A One Year Course in Mathematical Model Building

When the mathematics department of the University of Toledo revised its multi-track masters degree programs in applied mathematics in 1978 into a single track program, two courses in mathematical modeling were introduced. One was a course in continuous...

A Case for Mathematical Modeling

In September, 1982, we mailed questionnaires to fortyfive departments of mathematics in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana to discover where and how mathematical modeling is taught to undergraduates. Of ten replies, seven came from departments offering...

Some Applications of L'Hopital's Rule in Differential Equations

Even the best and most applications-oriented calculus textbooks, e.g. [I], do not provide any real world applications of L'Hopita11s Rule. In our view, the reason for this state of affairs is that most of the rule's applications occur later in the...

One Musician's Use of Combinations and Permutations

The study of combinations and permutations has fascinated scholars of all disciplines since ancient times. Within the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many music theorists used combinational and permutational techniques to arrange notes in to...

The Fibonacci Sequence

This presentation, centered on Fibonacci number theory and its applications. aims at instilling in beginners' minds the best and perhaps the only enduring motive to read mathematics, which is the aesthetic motive, by showing to them an anthology of...

Path Detection

An industry involved in defense systems can produce a detector that behaves as if it were a circle and knows when an object passes through that circle. The engineer who related this development to us indicated that the cost of production for such a...

The Minor Means

The Office of Publications of Local College makes the following statement: Although our College is large, its individual departments are small enough to promote close working relationships among the academic staff. Our average department size is only...

Modelling River Flow

From early experiences of dropping sticks into a river and watching their passage downstream, or later it becomes evident that the speed at which the water flows may vary considerably across its width. For a straight stretch of river the flow will...

The Surgical Correction of Astigmatism

Following corneal transplants and cataract surgery patients are often left with considerable astigmatism. There are a variety of surgical techniques for correcting this problem. but only recently have mathematical models been dweloped to predict how...

A Beginning Calculus Project

Each year, North Lake College (Irving, Texas) offers a Mini-College at which time seniors from nearby high schools visit the college for part of a day. During their visit, the students select and attend two half-hour Mini- College courses and...

Water Power

In recent years there has been renewed interest in finding alternative sources of energy to those provided by fossil fuels and nuclear power. To anyone living near the sea, the interest has centered on the energy in the waves and the tides, but to...

Calculus: An Infinitesimal Model for Teaching

It is a well-known fact that mathematics, particularly in the last century, has shown a definite tendency to separate from the physical world and to create its own subjects of study. This tendency has been reflected intensively in the field of...

International Standard Book Numbers

In 1968-72 all books published throughout the world began to receive coded ten-digit numerical labels called International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN's). For example, the ISBN of the text Multivariable Mathematics by Williamson and Trotter is...

What's Up , Moonface?

The moon, viewed from the earth, always presents the same face; but this face is perceived as tilted at different angles to different observers at different times. Given a few (oversimplified) astronomical facts, it becomes a purely mathematical...