Final Project

Goals and Objectives: You will research a topic related to mathematics that you are interested in and will communicate your expertise in a poster presentation (the poster must be a maximum of 2 feet wide and it must be taller than it is wide). You may work with at most one other person and the topic must be pre-approved by Dr. Sarah - topics will be assigned on a first come/first served basis.

Your research may take the form of topics in the book that we did not cover, further examination of something we did, or something else related to mathematics. I encourage you to be creative and find a topic that relates to mathematics that you are interested in. Come in to office hours to have your topic approved and I am also happy to give you some suggestions of topics and/or references in office hours.

Your final project will be turned in as a poster presentation and an annotated list of references, but I also encourage you to be creative here. Perhaps you want to create a short script for a scene in a play, a work of art, a musical composition, a webpage, a poem, etc.

We will divide up the class into two poster sessions. During your poster session, you must stand by your poster to answer questions (and your answers must demonstrate expertise of your topic). During the other session, you should briefly look over everyone's project, and choose three or four people (who are standing by their poster) to evaluate using the peer review form that will be given to you. A portion of your final project grade will be determined by the depth, quality and clarity of your peer reviews, which will be read by Dr. Sarah, but not by the project presenter. Each peer review must demonstrate that you read the project carefully. If you work on your project with someone else, you will each be in different poster sessions.

The final project will be graded based on the depth, clarity, and creativity of the explanations and poster presentation, and the quality of your peer reviews and references, and your abstract. On a separate sheet of paper, that is not attached to your poster, turn in an annotated list of any references with a summary of what is in each reference and how you used the reference. After the exam period is over, you will take your poster with you.

Just a few broad ideas - I suggest you skim through Heart and Mathematics and conduct some web searches to see what peaks your interest. For your topic, you will need to narrow it down...

  • Dyscalculia
  • Fractals and Chaos
  • The History of a Specific Number (Pi, Zero, the Golden Mean, Infinity...) or some other topic in the history of mathematics, like Egyptian mathematics.
  • The Mathematical Performance of the United States Compared to other Nations
  • Mathematics and Biology
  • Mathematics and Economic Models
  • Mathematics and the Environment
  • Mathematics and Medical Imaging
  • Mathematics and Music
  • Mathematics and Popular Culture
  • Mathematics and Religion
  • Mathematics and Sports
  • Mathematics and Visualization
  • National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards for Teaching School Mathematics
  • Proofs
  • Psychological Aspects of Mathematics
  • Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights
  • Symmetry