Three Westminster College Mathematics Students Presented Research

Westminster College students Meredith McCaskey, Amy Vaccari, and Gabrielle Orr recently presented their research at the Allegheny Mountain section meeting of the Mathematical Association of America.

McCaskey's project, "Seeding Tournaments and March Madness," used two different approaches to seeding single elimination tournaments. One scenario places the best team against the worst, and the other places groups together so that the best team is not necessarily playing the worst. These methods were applied to the NCAA tournament, using odds from a Las Vegas Internet site to determine if the seeding method changed the probability of a particular team winning. McCaskey, a mathematics major, is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles McCaskey, 269 Maple Lane, New Wilmington.

Vaccari's talk, "School Bus Scheduling," involved obtaining school bus data from a school district. She used a type of multiple traveling salesman algorithm to determine if the current routes were the best. Vaccari, a Methematics and computer science major, is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Vaccari, 1025 Dale Road, Jefferson Boro.

Orr's project, "Class Scheduling," considered the scheduling of classes from a mathematics student's point of view and from the professor's point of view to determine if the current scheduling could be improved. Orr, a mathematics major, is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Orr, 929 Princeton Ave, East Liverpool, Ohio.

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