MATH 401 - Directed Individual Study

Credits: 1

Prerequisite: Instructor consent. Individual conferences. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2018, MATH 401-01: Topics in Continued Fractions (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. A further study of number theory and continued fractions, with an emphasis on understanding the relationship between the roots of polynomials, and the collection of continued fractions with common tails. (EXP) Dresden.

Winter 2018, MATH 401-02: Military Engineering (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. Graded course. Dymacek.

Winter 2018, MATH 401-03: Actuary Exam P Preparation (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. A study of problem-solving techniques in preparation for the Society of Actuaries Exam P, which covers statistics and probability. Dresden.

Winter 2018, MATH 401-04: Computational Mathematics in R (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. An introduction to statistical and financial mathematics computation using R. Students learn about the basic data structures used in R and also learn to write their own programs to carry out computations introduced in MATH 270, MATH 309, and MATH 310. Finch-Smith.

Fall 2017, MATH 401-01: GRE Prep (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. Preparation fo rthe Math GRE exam. Denne, Finch-Smith.

Fall 2017, MATH 401-02: Putnam Prep (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. An investigation of various problem-solving techniques in preparation for the Putnam math exam. Students are required to register for and take the Virginia Tech Regional Math Contest (October) and Putnam exam (the first Saturday of December) as part of this course. Hardy.

Fall 2017, MATH 401-03: Topics in Number Theory (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. Dresden.

Fall 2017, MATH 401-05: Coverings of the Integers (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. Students will explore coverings of the integers as a number theoretic tool, using both theoretical and computational methods. Applications of coverings will be emphasized, particularly in the construction of Sierpiński and Riesel numbers. Finch-Smith.

Fall 2017, MATH 401-06: Extreme Points for Banach Spaces (1). Prerequisite: Instructor consent required. Review of the literature regarding extreme points for Banach spaces and the lambda-property of Aron and Lohman. In particular, will study results related to combinatorial Banach spaces. Beanland.