Knox College

Department of Mathematics

Math Research @Knox

One of the greatest things a program can do for its students is to impart the excitement on pushing back the envelope of knowledge and learning more about the world around us. This is why the department encourages research in all of its students. This research can take the form of extending mathematics and statistics or of using mathematics and statistics to better understand relationships in the world around us.

To that end, we require research for our majors and our statistics minors. The following lists some research projects our students have carried out over the past couple of years.

Academic Year 2021–2022

Ashus Owaisi. “The Japanese Warring States: A Statistical Study.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Beck Baird. “What Is "Not Statistically Significant:" Bayesian Insight on Data Analysis.”
Course-Related Research.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Samantha Lorenz. “Testing Differential Invalidation with Frequentist and Bayesian Analysis.”
Course-Related Research.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Anastasiia Ganshina. “Surgical Mask Detection.”
Data Science Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Dieu Kim (Zoey) Nguyen. “Analyzing the Olympic Record.”
Data Science Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Academic Year 2020–2021

Hao Li. “Using neural networks to recognize handwritten digits and to approximate simple functions..”
Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Andrew Leahy.

Libby Winchester. “Biases in the Great British Baking Show.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Elliot Bainbridge. “Research into the use of advanced statistical models to forecast asset options prices.”
Economics Honors Project.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Jason White. “Interdependency of Random Rates of Return.”
Financial Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Kevin Hastings.

Zoey Nguyen. “Is There a Better Model for Predicting Stock's Rate of Return?”
Financial Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Kevin Hastings.

Elliot Bainbridge. “Forecasting Tesla's Opening Stock Price using Advanced Statistical Model Building Techniques.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Joshua Schumacher. “Introduction to Commodity Swaps, Interest Rate Swaps, and Currency Swaps.”
Financial Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Kevin Hastings.

Academic Year 2019–2020

Shifa Dandia. “Dimensional Reduction in Education Research.”
Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Andrew Leahy.

Sarah Henderson. “Exploring Criminal Recidivism.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Jenna Milligan. “Algebraic Methods in Probability and Statistics.”
Mathematics Honors Project.
Advisor: Pedro Teixeira.

Jenna Milligan. “The Vasicek Test for Normality.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Debora Ortiz Lustgarten. “Poverty and Democracy.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Connor Weeks. “Predicting College Success through Machine Learning.”
Mathematics Honors Project.
Advisor: Kevin Hastings.

Aron Zheng. “Portfolio Rates of Return and the Laplace Distribution.”
Financial Mathematics Capstone.
Advisor: Kevin Hastings.

Academic Year 2018–2019

Khanh-Linh Duong. “A Statistical Analysis of the 2004 and 2009 Afghan Presidential Election.”
Statistics Project.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Kwadwo Kyei. “Investigating Corruption and Development in Africa: To what extent is development inhibited by corruption?”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.
SME: Carol Scotton (Economics).

Thu Nguyen. “Evidence of Differential Invalidation in Austrian Presidential Elections.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Thu Nguyen. “Statistical Programming with R.”
Statistics Project.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.

Jonathan Rico. “The Ferris Hotel: A preliminary feasibility study.”
Statistics Capstone.
Advisor: Ole J. Forsberg.