The Senior Program

Mathematics majors begin the senior year with a senior seminar. These small seminars focus on different areas of mathematics and are devoted largely to presentations by students and intensive discussion. Then, in the spring semester, students may elect to write a thesis, working independently but under close faculty supervision. The senior thesis is a culmination of each student's undergraduate experience; it synthesizes coursework, research and discussion into a focused statement of intellectual growth and insight. Strong student papers sometimes are published in scholarly journals — a remarkable accomplishment at the undergraduate level.

Recent projects in mathematics include:

• Guardians of the Gallery
• Nothing but Elastic-net: NCAA Tournament Prediction Using Penalized Regression
• Measuring Fairness: The Mathematics of Gerrymandering
• The Effect of Demographic Factors on Hourly Wages
• Calculating Clebsch-Gordan Coefficients Using Young Tableaux
• The Solow Growth Model and Optimal Debt Level
• Locally Recoverable Codes: A Technique for Creating Multiple Recovery Sets
• US Airways Optimizes flight-crew schedule
• Optimizing Student Adventure
• The pre-gaming paradox: consuming alcohol in anticipation of further alcohol consumption
• Splitting some (but not all) polynomials over a field
• Singled Out: Game Theory in Dating Shows
• Approximating p using Buffon’s needle
• Divisibility tests in other bases
• How do four years at college change students? An analysis of a NESCAC alcohol survey