Team Projects
Projects will be listed here as they are assigned.
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Modeling decay of pesticide in pond
Due Friday February 14. -
The SIR Model for Spread of Disease (Project Document)
Due Monday May 4.
The purpose of these projects is to allow you to work interactively with your classmates to solve a particular problem and to give you experience writing out a description of your solution. What distinguishes these projects from homework problems is that I'm not only interested in a correct solution, but am equally interested in how you present the solution. As I grade the projects I will ask questions like "are the thoughts leading from one step to the next clear and well articulated?" and "is the mathematical vocabulary being used correctly?"
The students on each team should work together to understand and solve the problem posed in each project. Teams may talk with one another, but each team must create their own written document for the project.
Your projects must be neat and well-presented. Fancy figures and colors are not necessary; you should strive for clarity and precision. Although the learning curve is steep, you may want to learn how to use LaTeX to write-up your project; LaTeX is the undisputed standards of text-processors for mathematical papers. Overleaf provides a good web-based LaTeX document preparation system. If you want to work off-line, try TeXstudio; packages are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. There is a lot of good documentation on writing LaTeX documents; Google around to find some you like. A good reference is The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e. Another nifty LaTeX helper is the Detexify LaTeX handwritten symbol recognition page, where you can draw a symbol and the site will tell you the LeTeX code for the symbol.
If you must resort to using Microsoft Word, the Microsoft Word Equation Editor should be able to handle the level of mathematics you need for these problems. You can easily find tutorials and there are some good YouTube videos about Equation Editor as well. Recent versions of the MS Word Equation Editor allows you to enter equations in LaTeX form, this might be a useful compromise offering advantages of both systems.
Finally, if you find it too difficult to use the word processor to display the proper mathematical notation, you may leave gaps in your write-up and then add the mathematical expressions neatly in ink by hand.