Research Projects for Students
A research project can be a very important part of an education inmathematics. Besides the greatly increased learning intensity that comes from personalinvolvement with a project, and the chance to show colleges or graduate schools and potential employersthe student's ability to initiate and carry out a complex scientific task, it gives the student anintroduction to mathematics as it is: a living and developing intellectual organism whereprogress is achieved by the interplay of individual creativity and collective knowledge.
High school and college students often have trouble findingappropriate topics for research projects in mathematics. This page presents some suggestions of where to look. Thesesources do not list project topics! But they present a wealthof mathematical subjects in an accessible way. Each of thesesubjects will have areas that invite further investigation.
- Joseph Malkevitch of York College, CUNY, maintains the web pageMathematical Research for High School Students, whichcontains a rich selection of resources.
- Ian Stewart in his Scientific American column "MathematicalRecreations" presents a new topic almost every month. He oftenincludes references where students can find additional information.Recent topics include card shuffling (11/98), cake slicingand other fairness problems (12/98 and 1/99), origami tessellations(2/99).
- The Math Forum website posts Problems of the Weekin geometry, algebra, discrete math, trig & calculus. The site alsolinks to Problems of the Week administered by others, including thechallenging college-level problems of Macalester College, theinteractive ESCOT Problem of the Week, and several team-based projects.
- The Mathematical Association of America's "MAA Online" has four Online Columns(by Ivars Peterson, Keith Devlin, Frank Morgan and Alex Bogomolny).Each of these columns can be gleaned for project ideas. Don't missthe links to past columns!
- This link is to a list of Research Project Ideas. This list is a copy of the list "Possible Science Fair Mathematics Projects" which was created by Afton H. Cayford, at TheUniversity of British Columbia.
- John Lienhard's KUHF program "Engines of our Ingenuity"has almost 100 episodes relating to mathematics. Go to theEngines' Search Pageand search on ``mathematics.'' The episodes are short but intense,and often come with a valuable reference list.
- What's Happening in the Mathematical Sciences is a publication (5 volumes are out) of the AMS and can be ordered from the AMS Bookstore. Each issue has 10 or more articlesby science writer Barry Cipra, each covering a new developmentin the mathematical sciences. Subjects treated are on the frontiers of mathematical research,but reading about them can be useful in searching for an areato explore.
- ABC News maintains an archive of John Allen Paulos' columns "Who'sCounting". An excellent source of project ideas in probability and statistics.
- +plus magazineis a monthly web publication, part of the Millenium Mathematics Project sponsored by the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Press.Every month there are 5 or 6 very accessible articles onmathematical topics (along with puzzles and news).
