|
Back
We will have two
papers and a presentation in the course. For these you will research an
interesting involving puzzles and games that interests you. You will discuss the key ideas,
history, contributions of key
people, strategies, variations, etc.
Possible
topics for the first paper are
-
Chess
Problems
-
Flexagons
-
Polyominoes
-
Pentominos
-
Conway's Game
of Life
-
Co-operative
Game Theory
-
Rubik's Cube
- Taken
-
Soma Cube
-
Tesselations/Tilings
-
Card games
-
Card
Shuffling
-
Strategies in
Monopoly, Backgammon, Go, etc.
-
Nim-like
Games
-
Variations on
the 15 Puzzle
-
Magic Squares
-
Latin Squares
-
Sudoku -
Taken
-
The Game of
Hex
-
Hamilton’s
Icosian Game
-
Biography of
Famous Person - Dudeney, Loyd, Dodgson, Gardner.
-
Other
Mathematical Puzzles - Fibonacci numbers, logic puzzles, Binary Gray
Code and Ring Puzzle, number puzzles, etc.
-
Other Sites
Some of these
topics can be used for the group projects.
Paper 1 - Due
October 25
Instructions:
-
This is an individual effort.
-
All work is to be typed in
10 or 12 pt format and double spaced.
-
Your work should be titled in an
appropriate way.
-
All pages should be stapled and
NOT folded and on standard sized paper.
-
You are expected to write using
good grammar and spelling. Your thoughts should be presented in full
sentences and you are to group your thoughts into paragraphs.
-
Your facts should be correct and
you should reference all work that is not your own. You should use
more than one source and at least one text and journal source from the
library. Do not simply cut and paste from the Internet!
-
Figures should not be too big,
should be labeled (Fig. 1, etc) and have captions, and should flow with
the text.
-
You should reference work that
is not your own, use standard bibliographic style and citation.
-
This is a short paper but at
least 5 pages long.
Paper 2 - Group Work
Leading to Presentation.
Please give to me a typed proposal for the topic your
group
plans to cover. Not only a topic name, but a discussion of what you plan to
do with the topic, resources you plan to use, etc. It is not sufficient to
use Wikipedia or some blogs. Go to the library, check out other
sources, especially reviewed papers.
You will be expected to submit a sufficient amount of
content and connection to the course material to warrant a decent grade for
this portion of the course. You need to demonstrate that you spent some time
researching the topic, its history, and digesting your topic. It should
not be a regurgitation of Wikipedia or other Internet sites. References
should also include books and articles from journals.
-
Draft paper - This should be more than half (10-12 pgs) of
the proposed paper with an abstract, introduction to topic, some
historical background, a main body, and references. It should include properly
formatted figures and equations (if included).
-
Final paper - The final paper should be on the
order of 20 pages, with proper formatting and references. All figures should be numbered, have descriptive captions, and
be referenced in the paper and not just inserted to produce volume.
Attention should be give to any suggestions made in the corrections of
the draft paper.
More to be posted on
this later.
All work
should be typed with double-spacing and 12 pt font. You will be expected to use correct English grammar and
punctuation. This is a report and thus you will use proper sentence and
paragraph formatting. Your work should also be supported with properly labeled and embedded
plots and equations. References should include articles and books with
little use of Wikipedia. Any references used should be cited in the body
of the paper as well. This
paper will count towards the project component of your grade.
Note, you will be graded on the how well you have
followed directions as well as evidence of work, topic detail and
understanding, proper exposition and neatness, and effort as noted by
appropriate length and depth presented.
Top
|