 Mentoring students through Critical Transition Points.  Lessons Learned.  Benefits.

 Administrative support is crucial!  Secretarial support. ◦ W9s, waivers, created reqs, reserving rooms, reviewing applications, details all over the place!  Departmental support…  Two differing unyielding bureaucracies!  FIND ADVOCATES!  BELIEVE IN THE PROJECT!!

 Students truly touched and inspired.  Other faculty may be motivated. ◦ Honeywell internship. ◦ Robotics. ◦ AMP grant.  I get challenged by the best and brightest students!

 Mathematical Biology. ◦ Disease vectors ◦ Cancer growth ◦ Bone growth  3d simulations and animations using maple  Abstract algebra applied to the real world.  Algorithmic solutions to mathematical problems.

MCTP Module Roberto Ribas

 Many important mathematics problems can ONLY be solved with algorithms.  Many problems are easier to solve with algorithms than with “regular” math.  Algorithms can verify a solution found traditionally

 Largest prime number ◦ Dr. Curtis Cooper of UCM recently found it! (He has had it twice before…) ◦ Uses all of the campus computers after people log off to search. ◦ 10,000 th prime #. (Had to leave the computer running for 30 hours to get it!)

 You have $10 to gamble on a fair coin toss, and you must bet the same percent of your money on every toss. If you fall below $0.01 you are eliminated from playing. If your money goes over $1 million you stop. What percent should you bet to maximize your chance of making $1 million?

 A simulation can double check a mathematical solution. ◦ Famous mars lender crash that flew the exact path it was programmed to fly. ◦ Radar tracking mode, one team had worked in meters, the other in feet… missile missed every target!

 Three doors, one has a prize behind it. You pick a door. Host opens one of the other doors, then asks, “do you want to keep the door you have, or switch to the remaining door?”  Should you stay? Switch? Or are they the same?

 problem/ problem/  Multiple PhD’s in mathematics wrote in, with some condescending and wrong replies!

 If you flip coins, which sequence are you likely to see first, or are they equally likely?  HHT or THH ?  Extension: given any two patterns of coins, find the probability of which will occur first.