Malaria, an infectious disease prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, is transmitted to humans through mosquito bites, and ordinary differential equation models have often been used to describe the spread of the disease. A basic agent-based model (ABM) of malaria transmission is established and compared to an ODE model of the disease in order to ascertain the similarity of the ABM to typical modeling approaches. Additionally, the ABM is described using protocol from current literature. In order to illustrate the flexibility of the ABM, the basic ABM is modified to incorporate the use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and the effect of acquired immunity. The simulations incorporating acquired immunity and the use of ITNs show a decrease in the prevalence of the disease due to these factors. Additionally, the ABM can easily be modified to account for other complicated issues affecting malaria spread.

We give an introduction to seriation techniques and apply such techniques to the North American folklore tale known as the Star Husband Tale. In particular, a spectral algorithm with imposed clustering is applied, with significant results that support the algorithm's effectiveness.

Examples and questions to help students understand the connection between the area under curves and samples, histograms, and various other indicators to which they have been exposed. The questions begin with the intuitive nature of empirical probabilities and progress from the frequencies to proportions, proportions to probabilities, and finally the ratio of areas in frequency charts to probabilities.

Consider the interesting geometric construction given by Manuel Santos-Trigo in the “Technology Tips” in the January 2004 Mathematics Teacher (Santos-Trigo 2004). He starts with an ellipse, its center point O, a variable point R on the line along the major axis of the ellipse, and variable points S and S', which are points on the ellipse that are reflections with respect to the major axis. Figure 1 shows the general setup and various placements of S. Santos-Trigo constructs a pair of lines, one through R and S and the other through O and S'. He describes a set of discovery exercises involving the locus of points generated by the intersection of these lines as the point S roams around the ellipse. The empirical conclusion of these exercises is that the locus is a conic section, the nature of which is determined in a fairly simple way by the location of R relative to O and the major vertices of the ellipse.