Southwest Baptist
University News Release
Contact:
Charlotte Marsch, Director of Marketing and Communications
(417)
328-1803 / cmarsch@sbuniv.edu
SBU Mathematics
students present workshop sessions
BOLIVAR, Mo. — Two Southwest Baptist
University students presented workshop sessions at the 30th annual Rose-Hulman
Conference on Undergraduate Mathematics April 19-20 at Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology in Terre Haute, Ind.
Weston
Herrington, a senior computer science and mathematics major from Carthage,
presented “Analysis of the Impact of the ALEKS Learning Tool on Undergraduate
Mathematics Students.”
“For
several years, the ALEKS online learning tool has been used as part of the
curriculum for PreAlgebra courses at my university, but it had not yet been
proven as to whether this was beneficial for the students,” he wrote. “This
semester, I analyzed the data that this professor and the ALEKS system had
gathered about student behavior. Through this research, I was able to apply
both correlation analysis and creation of statistical models to real world data
in order to find the most important factors in student performance.”
Luke
Abbott, a senior Computer Science and Mathematics major from Roach, presented “Generalizing
of Complex Fractals.”
“The
purpose of this presentation is to illustrate the generalizing of complex
fractals, specifically the Mandelbrot Set, into hypercomplex space,” Abbott
wrote. “This presentation will explain and illustrate how complex numbers in
fractal expressions can be replaced with hypercomplex numbers (such as
quaternions, bi-complex numbers, octonions, etc.) expanding the dimensions of
the fractal far beyond the original two. Using dimensional slicing these
hyper-dimensional shapes can be displayed in three-dimensional space, creating
a wide variety of three-dimensional representations of any fractal. This
generalization could very easily lead to the discovery of extraordinary
hyper-dimensional fractals that have never before been encountered.”
Dr.
Stephen Bowling, Professor of Mathematics, accompanied the students to the
conference. Dr. Bowling also served on
the committee for deciding the three candidates for the Best Presentation
Competition.
Some of the schools attending were
Illinois College, Calvin College, Rose-Hulman, Illinois Wesleyan, Missouri
Baptist, Purdue University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
Taylor University, with 108 attendees and 33 student presentations.
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Southwest
Baptist University is a leader among private universities in truly integrating
Christ-centered academic pursuits with comprehensive professional programs at
an affordable price. At SBU, the faculty and staff create a caring, academic
community to prepare students to be servant leaders in a global society. For
more information, visit www.SBUniv.edu.
