Monte Carlo and the Coding Tale

June 15, 2016July 25, 2016Leave a comment

By: Michelle Chen, Cameron Farrar, Laura O’Sullivan, and Cat Bassett

Introduction

Everything we do in life has a chance. That chance may come from picking the right card, picking a certain marble out of a bag or maybe deciding to give the first person who walks through a random door $100. Essentially,each chance has a certain trade-off of benefits. Often times we think about the chances as something will happen over the chance of something else taking place as we weigh possible outcomes. This is called risk analysis. One of the ways we can determine risk is we can use Monte Carlo simulations to replicate real life situations a large number of times in order to observe the long-term patterns without having the complications (cost, labor, materials, etc.) of manual repetition.

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Mathematical Epidemiology

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Camilla Fratta, Ananya Jain, Sydney Mason, Gabby Matejowsky, and Nevaeh Pinkney*.

*Nevaeh helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

Mathematical Epidemiology explores the realm of mathematics applied to public health. It relies on modeling to use known information about certain scenarios regarding the spread of diseases and then uses it to predict future outcomes. By the end of the problem set, our group learned about the challenging process that comes with trying to predict population sizes in order to control the spreading of diseases. The equations that are faced in this branch of mathematics are at the heart of mathematical modeling.

Mathematical Models and Modeling

A mathematical model is an equation used to predict or model the most likely results to occur in a real-world situation. We used these types of equations to model the spread of a disease in a population, tracking the flow of populations from susceptible to infected to recovered. In real life scenarios, there are too many variables to fully account for, so we only were able to place a few in our equations. This made the models less accurate, but at the same time very useful to us in our problem set. They gave us a good idea of how things worked in an actual epidemic and helped us to understand what mathematical modeling really is.

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Real World Cryptography

June 10, 2016July 25, 20161 Comment

By: Shai Caspin, Natalie Bowers, Bryana Dorsey, Nia Pierce, and Cana Perry

Cryptography is the act of encrypting and decrypting codes. It’s used to pass secret messages and keep outsiders from accessing information. Math is used to help encrypt codes using different methods. One common methods is to use RSA encryptions, which uses prime numbers and mod functions to make deciphering impossible. RSA encryptions are so successful since factoring large numbers into their prime factors is incredibly difficult, and there is yet a way to do so quickly and efficiently.

We were all very interested in learning more about cryptography since it incorporates everyday math with real-world problems and situations.

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Classification of Surfaces

July 2, 2018August 6, 2018Leave a comment

By Ayanna Blake, Lisa Oommen*, Myla Marve, Tamarr Moore, Caylah Vickers, and Lily Zeng.

*Lisa helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

The Girls Talk Math camp is about female high school students from different places who discuss mathematics, mathematicians, and theories. We were split up into groups and were assigned different math topics to learn. Our topic was classification of surfaces, which is listed under the umbrella topic of abstract geometry.

We thought the surfaces project was very interesting and cool to learn about, because it introduced us to college level math and allowed us to understand different parts of geometry. Along with gaining knowledge of surfaces, we also got to learn about other groups topics. Campers presented their topics on the last day and helped us to perceive the significance of the different subjects.

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography

June 30, 2017July 3, 2017Leave a comment

By Noa Bearman, Kimberly Cruz Lopez, Tina Lin, Xintong Xiang, and Maria Neri Otero*

*Maria helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

Introduction

Have you ever tried to send a secret message to a friend? Did it work? Was it secure? Well, one way to do so in a more secure way is by using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Most people have never heard of ECC before, and two weeks ago, neither did we. However, in the past two weeks, we have been learning how to use this exciting application of the techniques of algebraic geometry and abstract algebra applied to the ancient art of keeping messages secure. ECC was first introduced by Victor Miller and Neal Koblitz in 1985. It was proposed as an alternative to other forms of cryptography with public-key systems such as DSA and RSA. Public-key systems involve the use of two different kinds of keys: a public key that is available to the public and a private key in which only the owner knows. The applications of ECC has been growing and has recently gained a lot of attention in industry and academia. The following information below will go more in-depth on what ECC is, how it works, its advantages, its disadvantages, and our progression throughout this course.

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Surfaces

June 30, 2017July 3, 2017Leave a comment

By Elizabeth Datskevych, Nina Hadley, Sabrina James, and Rachel Ruff

In our problem set for the classification of surfaces, we learned many things about dimensions, folding, and the shapes folding makes. First we learned about what a dimension is. The definition of a dimension in this math is the direction an object can go. For example a bird can go up/down, left/right, and back/forth. Next we learned about folding and twisting objects. Diagram A shows a square with arrows on its side, which are the directions to fold. When you fold you match the arrows according to if they look-alike. So when you fold Diagram A it makes a cylinder. Now Diagram B has one arrow pointing the opposite of the other so you would twist before connecting the sides. Diagram B makes a Mobius band. We could make other shapes using the arrows such as the Klein bottle, and the torus. This topic was very fun and cool and it is a subject everyone will enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#girlstalkmath #girlsrock #blog2017

Knot Theory

July 12, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a comment

by Erin Gottschalk, Simon Johnson, Meghan, Elizabeth Nguyen, and Brooke Rogers*.

*Brooke helped the group work through the problem set but was unfortunately unable to attend camp during the blog writing.

What We Did:

Knot theory has many different applications in math including algebra and geometry, and (outside of math) physics. We learned that we can use algebraic techniques to describe knots. When trying to understand knot theory we learned that it is very helpful to work in a group and read the definitions out loud. Us working together was key in understanding knot theory.

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Renewable Energy @ WPI

July 7, 2022July 29, 2022Leave a comment

by Jess, Jianna, Jaelani, Karen, and Layomi

First of all, let’s start with what fossil fuels are. Fossil fuels are fuels derived from natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These resources are not reliable because they will not be renewed in the human lifetime; they also emit C02, which can be very harmful to the environment when released in large amounts.

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The Art of Cryptography

June 10, 2016July 31, 2016Leave a comment

By: Nia Beverly, Makayla McDaniel, Yuanyuan Matherly, and Tyler Deegan

Introduction

Cryptography is defined as the art of writing and solving codes. Upon first thought, many people picture codes as an antiquated war time communication technique. However, the field of cryptography is alive and well, and it has become pervasive in our everyday lives. The world is becoming more and more connected through technology, and with this, there is a greater need to protect information. Encryption is probably the most widely used application of cryptography, and it is used to protect information by making it so only one person with a key can understand what is transmitted. In the following paragraphs we will walk through the steps to mathematically understanding one widely used type of encryption.

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Quantum Mechanics

July 12, 2019September 2, 2019Leave a comment

by Nya Batson, Monique Dacanay, Emily Gao, and Staci Tranquille.

Hello! And welcome to the realm of quantum mechanics! First off, what in the world is quantum mechanics? Let’s start with a brief introduction.

What is Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum mechanics is one of the most important branches of physics. It focuses on the laws of nature at three different levels: molecular, atomic, and subatomic. Quantum mechanics has a variety of important concepts; the following are some that we learned through our problem set: Planck’s law, the photoelectric effect, and wave-particle duality. A crucial element of quantum mechanics is understanding that everything has characteristics of both waves and particles. We will touch on this and many other topics later on.

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