Mentoring students through Critical Transition Points.

Lessons Learned. Benefits.

Overview MCTP project

Administrative support is crucial! Secretarial support.

◦ W9s, waivers, created reqs, reserving rooms, reviewing applications, details all over the place!

Departmental support… Two differing unyielding bureaucracies! FIND ADVOCATES! BELIEVE IN THE PROJECT!!

Lessons Learned!

Students truly touched and inspired. Other faculty may be motivated.

◦ Honeywell internship.◦ Robotics. ◦ AMP grant.

I get challenged by the best and brightest students!

Benefits

Mathematical Biology.◦ Disease vectors◦ Cancer growth◦ Bone growth

3d simulations and animations using maple Abstract algebra applied to the real world. Algorithmic solutions to mathematical

problems.

MCTP modules

Solving math problems Algorithmically

MCTP ModuleRoberto Ribas

Many important mathematics problems can ONLY be solved with algorithms.

Many problems are easier to solve with algorithms than with “regular” math.

Algorithms can verify a solution found traditionally

Why Algorithmns?

Largest prime number◦ Dr. Curtis Cooper of UCM recently found it! (He

has had it twice before…)◦ Uses all of the campus computers after people log

off to search. ◦ 10,000th prime #. (Had to leave the computer

running for 30 hours to get it!)

Only with Algorithms

Finding the 10,000th prime!

You have $10 to gamble on a fair coin toss, and you must bet the same percent of your money on every toss. If you fall below $0.01 you are eliminated from playing. If your money goes over $1 million you stop. What percent should you bet to maximize your chance of making $1 million?

Easier to Solve

$1,000,000 oh yeah!

Irritate others!

A simulation can double check a mathematical solution. ◦ Famous mars lender crash that flew the exact

path it was programmed to fly. ◦ Radar tracking mode, one team had worked in

meters, the other in feet… missile missed every target!

Double check!

Three doors, one has a prize behind it. You pick a door. Host opens one of the other doors, then asks, “do you want to keep the door you have, or switch to the remaining door?”

Should you stay? Switch? Or are they the same?

Monte Hall Problem.

http://marilynvossavant.com/game-show-problem/

Multiple PhD’s in mathematics wrote in, with some condescending and wrong replies!

Monte Hall

If you flip coins, which sequence are you likely to see first, or are they equally likely?

HHT or THH ?

Extension: given any two patterns of coins, find the probability of which will occur first.

One for you: