The class of 1998 is the 50th class to go through the trials of the infamous Independent Study Thesis. We are happy to report, however, that the senior math and computer science majors have pulled it off this year with great success. The department had a large number of majors this year, including many double majors, which made for a wide variety of interesting topics. See for yourself...

Doug Sillars, a double major in Math and Chemistry, wrote on "The Structural Determination of a Mutant Uteroglobin Protein Using Molecular Replacement and Simulated Annealing Techniques." Whew. He studied the crystal structure of a protein using the X-PLOR software package and did calculations and analysis accordingly on some dimers and stuff.

It sounds like Brian Monteleone, a math-geology double major, got to travel to work on his I.S. project. Said Brian, "I used petrology to deduce the pressure and temperature evolution of rock suites that make up the Tobacco Root Mountains in Southwestern Montana. For math, I used cooling models to study the maximum temperature impact of the intrusion of a high temperature igneous batholith on the surrounding rocks within the Tobacco Root Mountains."

Senior Troy Kozee (a math-CS double major) won the award for the longest senior I.S. project, with his thesis totaling over 200 pages. Troy describes his thesis as a look at the use of fractals in modeling natural objects. This study focused on using Brownian motion to create random landscapes and cloud patterns. It then looked at techniques for rendering photorealistic images of these landscapes and cloud patterns on a computer. Apparently the landscapes he generated are way cool!

Michele Hayward titled her thesis "What Dimension is it Anyway?" In this thesis she studied the various notions of dimension with a concentration on fractal dimension (theory and applications). She described Euclidean dimension, topological dimension, covering dimension, space-filling curves, the fourth (and considerations of higher) dimension(s), and fractal dimension. Michele notes that it was a really rewarding experience!

Dan Core's combined I.S. in geology and mathematics was titled "Geochemical and Statistical Analysis of Carbonatites from Potash Sulfur Springs in Magnet Cove, Arkansas." He collected samples and data and did some t-squared statistical analysis based on formulas he was able to derive.

Bob Englehart investigated "The Teaching and Learning of Fractions," looking at the philosophy of constructivism in education administering a survey and creating a lesson geared for second grade fraction learners.

"A Study of the Theory of Network Flow and the Applications of Network Flow Problems" is the title of Jim Barlett's I.S. In this project he analyzed network flow problems using software which included specific algorithms and looked at some real life problems.

Katie Ziegler wrote about "Burnside's Lemma and Polya's Enumeration Theorem: Counting Configurations Nonequivalent with Respect to a Given Permutation Group." She used the theorems to look at the unique colorings of the five platonic solids.

Jon Drover, whom we have never been able to contact, apparently did his I.S. on iterated functions like Newton's Method. He had to use some chaos theory and all sorts of fun stuff.

Beth Roessler's thesis is entitled Basic Mathematical Models of Population Genetics".

Andy Pal studied Genetic Algorithms for his senior I.S.

Indradeep Ghosh, a double major in math and economics, titled his project "The Socially Optimal Regulator."

"Nonlinearity and Computation: Implementing Logic as a Nonlinear, Dynamical System" is the title of Bryan Prusha's I.S. He is a double major in CS and physics.

Mustafa Hasham (CS) wrote about "The Unicode Character Set Conversion between Unicode and Other Coded Character Sets."

Martin Key described "A Network Experiment: The Integration of an NT Network into the College of Wooster's Current Macintosh Network."

Mike Carson's title is "The Use of Fuzzy Set Logic in Model Design."

It has been another exciting year of I.S., and we congratulate all of the seniors on their hard work!