Math 178 Term Project Suggestions

You can also choose a topic of your own





These are some suggested topics (you can also choose your own). Please have a proposal for project ready by July 20. I will discuss the proposal with you. The project can be either a written report (4 - 6 pages), a poster, a webpage, etc. I would like you to give a brief (10 min) presentation when you are finished. The due date for the written project is 4pm Friday August 10.

  • The Cantor set and Cantor-like sets and their role in the development of mathematics.
  • Fractal dimension (including box-counting dimension). [Ch 4]
  • Space-filling curves and the notion of dimension. [Section 2.6]
  • The Contraction Mapping Principle and IFS. [Sections 5.6, 5.7]
  • Randomness in fractals. [Chapter 9]
  • Fractal landscapes [Section 9.6]
  • L systems [Ch 7]
  • Playing the Chaos Game with nonrandom sequences
  • Fractal art
  • Fractal music
  • Fractal Image Compression [App. A in first Ed. of our text]
  • Historical development of chaos (eg., Lorenz experiment, 'stability' of the solar system, etc)
  • Structure of the final state diagram for the logistic function [Chapter 11]
  • The Henon map [Chapter 12]
  • Quantum Chaos (eg., Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics, by Martin C. Gutzwiller)

    See also the suggested topics on the Math 335 page (includes references).

    This may be udated occassionally.

    Last updated: July 20