Management Science
Management science uses the scientific method to develop solutions for management decision problems. For example, a pet…
An Application of the Classical Lot-Size Formula
The classic inventory problem asks how many items should be made per batch to minimize the total costs of production. T…
Attacking the Spruce Budworm
While the spruce budworm poses a severe threat to spruce-fir forests of Canada and the northern United States, the thre…
The Euler Number and Computer Vision
The world of computing stands at the brink of what may be a revolution, the use of parallel processing to speed up calc…
Analysis of Supermarket Checkouts
Consider the following scenario. You go to the supermarket and select 11 items. Upon reaching the checkout area, you no…
Handicapping a Championship Series with Elementary Symmetric Polynomials
On June 2, 1987, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics met in Los Angeles for the first game of the 1987 Nation…
Winning Streaks, Shutouts, and the Length of the World Series
In a recent article in this Journal [Brunner 19871, the theory of absorbing Markov chains was applied to the expected n…
Cutting a Counter
The purpose of this article is to present an example of the usefulness of trigonometry and linear algebra to solve a pr…
Insurance Policies with Deductibles
Many health insurance policies carry a deductible. It is the amount below which the insurance company has no responsibi…
Common Wisdom, Logarithmic Differentiation, and Compound Interest
Recently Michael RRed criticized the calculus curriculum for teaching how to differentiate functions of the form f (z)g…
Waste Minirnization via Cutting Stock Models
We discuss a class of linear programming minimization models known as cutting stock, trim loss, or bin packing models…
Distribution of Dopamine in the Brain
We construct a three-dimensional unsteady-state mass transport model to predict the behavior of dopamine levels in the…
Error Detecting Schemes Using Dihedral Groups
With inexpensive, fast, and reliable scanning devices and computers, it is now standard practice to append a check digi…
Spherical Geometry in Medical Imaging
Assume that energy (sound, light, heat, or radiation) is radiating uniformly in all directions from a point source, wit…
Racquetball as a Stochastic Process
Racquetball, volleyball, squash, and badminton are games in which one player (or team) serves, points are won only when…
Commentary on Spherical Geometry in Medical Imaging
In Moore and Moore [19901, we gave exercises (Exercises 1, 7, and 8) that ask the reader to find the dihedral angle for…
Finding Best Approximate Circle
The Mathematical Modeling (MA363) class in the fall of 1990 was populated by 10 mathematics and computer science majors…
The Wright Stuff
I would like to take you back to December 17,1903, near the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where two brothers from…
Braess's Paradox: A Puzzler from Applied Network Analysis
In late 1990, the New York Times carried a story concerning traffic flow, which was not the usual bad news of gridlock…
Mathematical Develovments in 1991
The major news in mathematics in 1991 was the spread of research and applications involving wavelets. Other announced r…
Estimating Unreported Losses
Property and casualty insurance companies need to establish appropriate reserves to cover the liabilities they incur in…
Some Transcendental Results Concerning Air Resistance
When a projectile is shot or a ball is thrown, the simplest mathematical model ignores air resistance and obtains the f…
Bertrand's Paradox
A chord is a straight line whose endpoints are any two points on a circle. What is the probability that a chord of a ci…
The Dimensions of Window Glass for a Trapezoidal Opening
Recently, I received a request from a local window manufacturer for help in determining the dimensions of a window to b…
Aggregate Demand and Supply-side Economics
Since the publication of the first edition of Samuelson's Principles text in 1948, introductory treatments of the short…
The Power of Incumbency
We are interested in modeling the length of tenure in office of a legislator. Once he or she is initially elected, the…
The Zip Code Bar Code
I was recently asked by a chemist to figure out the scheme used to create the bar code for the extended zip code on bus…
Equilibrium Populations in Singles Bars
Singles bars are generally regarded as places where people go to meet other people. But alas, not every person one meet…
Simpson's Rule for Double Integrals
In a previous paper and UMAP module, this author developed an extension of the trapezoid rule to evaluate double integr…
The Role of Mathematics in Atonal Music
The study of atonal music might seem far removed from mathematics, but in fact a close bond exists. Moreover, a good de…
Secret Encryption with Public Keys
For centuries people have wished to communicate with one another while keeping their communications secret from outside…
Absorbing Markov Chains and the Number of Games in a World Series
A process whose stages are governed by the initial state the process was found in is known as a Markov process. The stu…
The Growth of Administrative Problems
Many administrators experience the feeling that the amount of paperwork they need to deal with increases substantially…
An Application of Matrices to Space Shuttle Technology
Shuttle's Robot Arm Snares Errant Satellite [Wilford 1984al; Robot Arm Knocks Troublesome Ice Off Space Shuttle [Wilfor…
Editorial Process of a Bimonthly: A Case Study
We analyze the editorial processing of manuscripts for a bimonthly professional journal. Our goal is to determine the e…