Suggestedcapstonetopics.docVIP

Dr. Bryan Dorner dornerbc@ Some capstones can deal with the intersection of computers and mathematics. Capstones along this line can take many forms. 1. Famous problems. The Four Color Theorem. This theorem says that you only need 4 colors to color any map so that adjacent countries have different colors. The only proofs known require a computer to check all the possibilities. The big ideas in the proof and a complete proof of the 5 color theorem have made good capstones in the past. The Halting Problem. This problem from theoretical computer science says that its impossible to write a computer program that takes as input any other computer program and outputs whether or not that other program will terminate after a finite number of steps. The ideas a somewhat similar to Goedel’s proof that there are statements that are true, but cannot be proved, and also to proofs that there are numbers that cannot be computed. Games and Puzzles. Sudoku has become a very popular pastime. One way to really understand the strategies would be to write a computer program to solve (and then to generate) such puzzles. A capstone would require presenting the logic of such a solution clearly and engagingly. Algorithms In the past, two students worked on methods for factoring large integers which lies at the heart of efforts to break the RSA security code. There are other methods which they did not cover. You could work on historical and new methods for computing square and higher roots as well as values of trig functions.I know a non-standard way of computing sine, cosine, sinh, and cosh that suggests a geometric way to approach the CORDIC method of computing these functions that is simpler than the approach usually given. (Many calculators use the CORDIC method.) Dr. Jessica Sklar sklarjk@ Past topics students have worked on include computational group theory, the Rubik’s cube, Galois theory (an advanced topic in abstract algebra), tilings, error-correcting codes, and topology. I