Reasons to do a project

You want to learn more material than is being covered

There is a specific application or result you want to learn more about

A higher percentage of your final grade will be based on work from outside of class

Reasons not to do a project

The project is extra work

There are no consequences for not doing a project

How projects work

Once you decide to do a project, there will be two check-ins and several intermediate steps to help keep you on track. A complete description is available here. There is some flexibility in what a finished project will include. It must have a written component and some practical component.

Potential topics

Here are some potential topics. You are encouraged to find topics of interest to you. Some of these topics have room for more than one project.

Applications of modeling

Mathematics of shuffling

Poisson processes and there applications

Random walks and recurrence (Chapter 12 ot text)

Generating functions (Chapter 10)

Probability in Sports

Probability in stock markets

Probability and option pricing

Information theory

Random number generators and randomness

Gambling

Stopping rules for Markov chains

Simulating continuous random variables

Visualizing probability