Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Nicole Panza, Westminster College senior mathematics major, successfully defended her Honors thesis March 25.
Panza, a graduate of Shaler Area High School, is a daughter of Nancy Panza of Glenshaw and Louis Panza of Eighty Four.
The Honors thesis is the culmination of the research required for the Honors program at Westminster. Successful completion and defense of the thesis entitles the student to have "College Honors in [name of major or discipline]" inscribed on the diploma.
The abstract for Panza's thesis, "Applications of Game Theory to Peer Evaluations," explained: "In educational cooperative learning and team-based learning, peer evaluations can be used to determine whether each student participated in assigned work. Peer evaluations can be modeled with zero-sum and non-zero-sum games. The more fair evaluation is the zero-sum peer evaluation because it is harder to give the lowest score possible. It allows students to speak their minds, but does not allow harmful and sometimes unjustified scores."
The Honors board included: moderator Dr. Patrick McCarthy, Westminster College professor of biology; Dr. Carolyn Cuff, Westminster College professor of mathematics and Panza's adviser; outside member Dr. Daniel Fischmar, Westminster professor of economics and business; and Academic Standards Committee member Dr. Scott Mackenzie, Westminster assistant professor of theatre.
Contact Cuff at (724) 946-7291 or e-mail ccuff@westminster.edu for additional information.
