Math 111 Project
Spring 2003

The major piece of assessment for this class will be a final project. This will involve reading at least one research paper, and writing a summary which includes any necessary background material, and further directions. Your goal should be to make the paper acessible to other members of the class. Achieving this will take approximately 10 pages.

Possible Topics

The following are possible topics for your final project. Talk to me for more details and some preliminary references. You are free to do your project on a topic not on this list. In all cases (including topics from this list) your final choice needs to be approved by me by January 30. UPDATE: Try to make your choice in the week ending February 6. Make an appointment to see me on the Wednesday or Thursday of that week.
  • The Gröbner fan and the state polytope.
  • Applications to optimization, including integer programming.
  • Applications to robotics.
  • Applications to contingency tables in statistics.
  • Solving polynomial systems using homotopy methods.
  • Resultants.
  • Free resolutions.
  • Generic initial ideals.
  • Gröbner bases over the integers
  • Noncommutative Gröbner bases
  • Complexity of computing Gröbner bases
There are several stages of revision required for this assignment, including peer review.

Important Dates

Date Activity Comments
1/30 Project choice due.  
2/9 (NEW DATE) Reference list due.  
2/20 Draft/outline due.  
3/3 Peer-review version due. Peer-review feedback sheet
in PDF.
3/10 Draft due.  
3/19 Final version due (12:15pm).  

More information about specific requirements for these deadlines will be available closer to the dates.
You are strongly encouraged to type your assignment. If you wish to learn LaTeX to do this, there are many online guides to do this. Two examples are available here and here. The best reference book is the Latex book by Leslie Lamport (this should be in the bookstore). Latex was written by Lamport on top of the TEX system which was written by Don Knuth (in the CS department here at Stanford). The best way to learn Latex, though, is to modify an old file.