In school I wrote a few papers for classes and research projects. Beware that the ideas are generally poorly formulated and elementary ... but maybe you'll be able to find something interesting here anyway.
Variations on Public Key Cryptography and Some Other Stuff
Matt and I worked on this paper for our project in number theory at NCSSM. We also wrote some code that is guaranteed to break a windows machine, but that is best forgotten. You can download this paper as a PDF file. We worked hard on this paper ; be sure to respect our rights if quoting or whatnot.
What is a Model ?
I've been working a lot recently on a software development tool that generates concrete code based on an abstract component model. The model is specified using a series of declarations written in a formal language. Based on this specification, our tool builds up an abstract model and then generates code to implement the model. This project has been quite interesting, ...
Artificial Intelligence in Context : Ethical Implications of a Developing Technology
While I was at NC State, Benjamin Franklin Scholars were required to take three courses to complete the program. One of these courses is The Ethical Dimensions of Progress, also known as MDS 304H. In this class (at least when I took it in the spring of 1999), we discussed ethical dilemmas related to the concept of progress. We based our approach ...
Can Artificial Intelligence Replace the Engineer ?
Every year the Professional Engineers of North Carolina (PENC) hold a student paper contest open to all students at NC State, Duke, and UNC. This is my submission to the contest in 1999. I ended up winning at the local and state levels, but as I reread it I realize that I made some pretty serious errors in argumentation, including a ...
Newton's Method
Newton's method is an algorithm for finding the roots of any differentiable equation in the imaginary plane. For many functions, the results display fractal properties. This was a project that Alex, Jesse, and I worked on for our first calculus investigation during our junior year at NCSSM.
Logistic Population Harvesting
In discrete math at NCSSM, Marty and I worked on this paper about optimal harvesting of a population that grows logistically. If you like, you can download a version of this paper as a PDF file.
Contaminant Flow
A weekend of insomnia produced a paper, semi-coherent code, and a Maple worksheet describing the flow of contaminants through soil. Our model used a fairly simple dispersion theory that makes some neat pictures, if nothing else. This work was with Marty and Jon for the 1999 Mathematical Competition in Modeling. You can get the paper here as a PDF file. You ...
Empirical Constraints for Universal Grammar
This is a paper I wrote for an independent study in psychology during the spring semester of 2001. Dr. Kalat and I focused on Terrence Deacon's rather dense 1997 work, The Symbolic Species, which discusses several interesting neuroscientific developments and attempts to relate them to the debate over language development in humans. I concentrated my efforts on the limits that Deacon's ideas ...