Team: 3-6 students
Supervisors: Dr. Katherine Stange, Dr. Glen Whitney (Studio Infinity) and Liam Mulhall
Time Commitment: 5 hrs per week
Pay or Credit: Pay ($15/hr) or 2 credit hours in independent study (MATH or possibly CS), or a combination.
Description:
Numberscope is an online tool, designed for researchers, hobbyists and artists, to visualize integer sequences. Integer sequences arise in all areas of mathematics and science, and they can have all sorts of interesting properties: factorization properties, statistical properties, even fractal self-similarity. These properties lend themselves to visualization. In Numberscope, one can combine a favourite integer sequence (say, chosen from the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences), with ready-made interactive visualization tools.
The Numberscope platform is currently under development (GitHub), and the team will serve two primary purposes: (1) to explore mathematics through computer illustration and experimentation, and (2) to provide user experience on the tool and to help improve it. Each student will develop their own visualizer to incorporate into numberscope, written in TypeScript (a type-annotated version of JavaScript, the most common language for front-end web programming). Students can further explore mathematical questions with their new tool, or work on the graphic design or software development of the tool itself.
Students will be expected to have mathematical curiosity, together with experience programming in at least one language. Students who do not know TypeScript should be independent enough to learn it on the go. Students with some software development experience or web graphics design experience (and/or an eagerness to learn these skills) will be welcome to participate in the development of the web software itself.
Application: DUE AUGUST 19th, 2022.
Send application materials to katherine.stange@colorado.edu with the subject line "NUMBERSCOPE APP". A complete application consists of:
- Cover letter or personal statement indicating your interest in the project, including how it will help you in your educational path, and how you can contribute.
- Unofficial transcript
- CV
- Statement (included in cover letter is fine) about availability during the semester, e.g. how many other responsibilities will you have and how available are you for daytime meetings? I find students have a tendency to over-commit, so please think about how this project will fit into your weekly routine and how you will prioritize it. We will need to find a one-hour weekly meeting time. The time committment is 5 hrs/week including that meeting.
Back to the Experimental Mathematics Lab.