Thursday, April 18; Faculty Commons conference room

3-4pm: CET (Present: Aparicio Carranza, Yu Wang, Ohbong (John) Kwon

  • Arthur Kramer’s books are great references for applications that can be inserted into many MAT courses
  • the most important math content for CET students is statistics and linear algebra
  • understanding physics applications can help students with understanding engineering applications
  • topics mentioned: domains/ranges of functions (coming from real life), solving equations, scientific notation, units,(scientific) calculator
  • project idea: use MATLAB (or programming language) and logical thinking to implement something using course material
  • Fourier analysis is not on the MAT 2680 course outline but is important for CET 3625 students (these courses used to be coordinated but the coordination was lost with the recent MAT 2680 course outline change)
  • The spring problems/RLC circuit sections of MAT 2680 are also important for these students; instructors should not skip these sections
  • is it possible to create a course that combines elementary statistics with linear algebra?

4-5:20pm: CST (Present: Candido Cabo, Bader Oudjehane, Ashwin Satyanarayana)

  • Ashwin’s ideas for MAT 1475 applications:
    • Backpropagation algorithm for deep learning/machine learning/neural networks
    • time complexity of algorithms
    • gradient descent
  • important topics for CST students:
    • statistical analysis
    • elementary probability
  • important topics for data science students:
    • linear algebra
    • discrete models
  • ideas for statistics/probability project:
    • use a real-life example like a Photoshop image to motivate variance; write code to calculate variance
    • similarly, applying a Photoshop filter is an example of a convolution
  • MAT 2440/2540 examples and homework exercises look reasonable but students might not recognize that they’re encountering the same problem in different guises
    • e.g., postage stamps (less relevant) versus data packets (more relevant)
  • there are some elementary topics that many students struggle with that aren’t officially on MAT course outlines; could they be included somehow in homework problems so that students encounter them anyway? for example:
    • percents
    • unit conversion
  • is it possible to tag a certain sections of MAT 2440/2540 for CST students and require programming for these sections only?