Applied Calculus Projects: Guidelines for Students

Nature of the Project

Your project should feature a practical problem from the field you are pursuing and require the use of calculus
tools. Beyond that, problems might be either well-defined or open-ended.

All projects will have at least two advisors:

a Subject Area Advisor and a Mathematics Advisor.

Subject Area Advisor

Your Subject Area Advisor will most likely be the person (e.g., work supervisor, faculty member, postdoc,
etc.) who suggested the project to you. This person might simply hand you a project and say “Come back when
you are done” or schedule meetings with you to discuss it. How you work with your Subject Area Advisor is
between you and her/him.

Mathematics Advisor
Your Calculus course Instructor will be your Mathematics Advisor. You may have more than one Mathematics
Advisor (any Faculty or Graduate student in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics).

How to Select a Project

The problem for your project can come from a number of different sources. If you have a job or an internship,
your work supervisor might have a problem that is important to the organization you work for. If you have an
undergraduate research position, your research advisor can be a source of project ideas. Or, you might have
already taken a class or two with faculty members in your major and they might be willing to suggest a
problem for you to work on. The best source of a project might be you though. Consider the things you are
interested in and look for an application of calculus to them. If you can find one, you can probably build a
project around that.

Publication in the Undergraduate Journal of Mathematical Modeling: One + Two

Selected projects will be published in the open access electronic journal UJMM: One + Two,
[Link]/ujmm/ or [Link]/ujmm/ under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-
Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license. Submission of a project report will imply that you are giving the editors
of UJMM: One + Two permission to publish your report in this journal, should it be selected.

Project Deadlines
The deadline for selecting a project will be given to you by your Calculus Instructor. Your subject area advisor
might wish to review your report and make suggestions before you submit it. You should ask her/him if this is
the case and, if so, when the deadline for this is. The official due date of the project (final submission) the day
that it must be uploaded will be given to you by your Calculus Instructor.

Project Submission
Your project (equations, graphs, diagrams, pictures included) should be presented as a Microsoft WORD
document. Clarity of writing is important. At the very least, be sure to use your spell-checking and grammar-
checking facilities. It is very important that you include the correct first and last names of your project
advisors. Also be certain to include their correct USF Department or Company Affiliation. This information as
well as your own correct first and last name is crucial for proper identification of your project upon online
submission. You will need to prepare a Project Summary in advance. This is a concise abstract type
description written in the third person. The Project Summary will be posted online so it should be
understandable to a general audience. Therefore it should be focused on the subject matter rather than
mathematical formulas and details. You should submit your project through the PROJECT SUBMISSION link
provided by your Calculus Instructor. The check list of the required and optional data appears as the first page
in the submission process. You may be required to provide your advisors with a hard copy of your project.

Project Checklist
1. Find a Subject Area Advisor for your project, by ..................
2. Meet with your chosen Subject Area Advisor and identify a problem, by ..............
3. Check back with your Mathematics and Subject Area Advisors concerning your understanding of the
problem and a mathematical approach to solve it. Consult with them about any difficulties or questions.
4. Show a draft of your report to all advisors no later than ................
5. Submit final copy online, by ...............

Report Format
Project submissions must be in the following format:
(a) Cover page and Problem statement.
The cover page should use the following template, followed by the problem statement. Current
semester and year, Your section (e.g., MAC2282.902) MATHEMATICS ENGINEERING PROJECT
* * or MATHEMATICS MEDICINE PROJECT, MATHEMATICS BIOLOGY PROJECT,
MATHEMATICS-ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE PROJECT, etc.

PROJECT TITLE
Student: First Name Last Name

ADVISORS
Mathematics Advisor: First Name Last Name
Affiliation**
Subject Area Advisor: First Name Last Name
Affiliation**
Problem suggested by: First name Last name
Affiliation**

PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Provide an exact statement of the problem as suggested by its author.
(b) Table of Contents. Include the following sections in the table and give the page numbers.
Contents
1. Abstract
2. Motivation
3. Mathematical Description and Solution Approach
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
6. Nomenclature
7. References

Appendix (calculations, graphs, pictures, spreadsheet information )

(c) Abstract. The abstract is a short summary of your project report it should not exceed one or two paragraphs.
It should concisely state what you did, how you did it, and what conclusions you drew from the results. The
abstract will be posted online so it should be well written.

(d) Motivation. In this section you should give some background about why the problem is important to
science or engineering. You should also describe the problem within its engineering or science context and
provide the objective for the project.
(e) Mathematical Description and Solution Approach. In this section, you should formulate the mathematical
approach to solving the problem providing the relevant equations, describing the mathematical tools you used
and outline the procedure used. Do NOT simply list the equations use text between them to provide a clear
understanding of them to the reader.

(f) Discussion. Here, you should provide the results and discuss them. Did you meet the objective of the
project? Were they as expected, or were they counter-intuitive? What implications do your results have to the
problem at hand and to the field in general?

(g) Conclusions and Recommendations. Give the basic conclusions of your work. This will be somewhat
similar to what is in the abstract but with a little more detail for instance, including a summary of your
interpretation of the results. You should also make a few recommendations such as things a person doing the
same project might do differently or ideas for a new study that is suggested by your results.

(h) Nomenclature. List the symbols that you use in your report. For each symbol, provide a description of what
it represents and its units. Example: P Pressure kPa T Temperature oC v Velocity m/s V Voltage V All units
used should belong to the same measuring system: Standard (English) or Metric (SI). Carefully check whether
the units agree and are balanced on both sides of each equation.

(i) References. Any work or ideas that you have taken from someone else should be cited directly in the text of
your report. This includes any figures that you might download from the web. Do your best to find and cite the
original source of information rather than the secondhand source. At the end of the report should be a list of
references that were cited. Book and scientific journal references are strongly preferable to webpages.

(j) Appendices. You might have detailed calculations, spreadsheets or computer programs that were used to
obtain your results but do not belong in the main report. If so, you should place these materials in appendices
and refer to them as needed in the report.

Note:

Your Applied Calculus Projects is supposed to be creative, nice, useful, well written, with
Microsoft word equations, related pictures and graphs included.

There should be given:

Project Title, Your First Name, Your Last Name

Mathematics Advisor: Arcadii Grinshpan or any other member of the Mathematics and
Statistics Department at USF

Subject Area Advisor(s): First Name, Last Name, USF department or Company Name

Problem Suggester: First Name, Last Name, USF department or Company Name, or USF
Student

The Project Summary should be prepared without formulas in advance to be used during the
submission process.
It will be posted online for everyone.

The selected projects will be published in the Undergraduate Journal of Mathematical

Modeling: One + Two, and posted online.

References and Plagiarism - Do your own project!

References:

Any work or ideas that you have taken from someone else should be cited directly in the text
of your project. This includes any figures that you might download from the web. Do your
best to find and cite the original source of information rather than to use the secondhand
source. At the end of the project there should be a list of the cited references. Book and
scientific journal references are strongly preferable to webpages.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own, with or without their
consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.

Plagiarism can result in class failure. Do your own project!