Student Profile

                        Name: Becky Wolf
Major: Mathematics

It adds up

When Becky was trying to figure out which major to choose, a lot of variables pointed her toward mathematics. One early influence was her mother who is a math teacher. She also fell in with the math crowd, solving problems and building relationships with her math peers. She took a math class with Professor Michael Tangredi her first year, and that sealed the deal. He is now her faculty advisor and she has been a teacher’s assistant for him for two semesters. “I’ve always known I wanted to do something with the rest of my life that would challenge me and make me think, and my math background will give me the tools and confidence to do this,” says Becky.

Oh, and she happens to be very good at math. 

How good? Her senior honors thesis is titled “Very Discrete Dynamical Systems,” and it deals with the dynamics of the floor logistic function. It’s original research, which she worked on over the summer with Professor Bob Hesse. The results of her original research, says Becky, “can then be applied to study the dynamics of round-off error by computers and calculators in important computations.”

Her research took her to Mathfest this past summer. That was the summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America and Pi Mu Espsilon in Boulder, Colo. She presented her work during that four-day meeting.

Becky has considered following her mother’s example to become a math teacher, but her short term plans are to go to work for Target Corporation. She wants to work as a business analyst/buyer and has been pre-selected for a full-time position there after she graduates.