A well known result due to Laplace states the equivalence between two different ways of defining the determinant of a square matrix. We give here a short proof of this result, in a form that can be presented, in our opinion, at any level of undergraduate studies.

The mathematics for finding and plotting the locations of stars and constellations are available in many books on astronomy, but the steps involve mystifying and fragmented equations, calculations, and terminology. This paper will introduce an entirely new unified and cohesive technique that is easy to understand by mathematicians, and simple…

This article describes the sequence alignment problem in bioinformatics. Through examples, we formulate sequence alignment as an optimization problem and show how to compute the optimal alignment with dynamic programming. The examples and sample exercises have been used by the author in a specialized course in bioinformatics, but could be adapted…

This article shows how to use six parameters describing the International Space Station's orbit to predict when and in what part of the sky observers can look for the station as it passes over their location. The method requires only a good background in trigonometry and some familiarity with elementary vector and matrix operations. An included…

A game is presented in which computation by a stepping-stone method is used to solve minimax problems. An additional application of this game is used for finding the Pearson correlation coefficient by non-parametric techniques. The game provides considerable computational practice as well as a motivational problem solving situation. (JP)

Presents two papers commenting on previous published articles. Discusses formulas related to the determinants of sums and tests the formulas using some examples. Provides three special cases of the determinants of sums. (YP)

Chio's method of evaluating determinants by successive reduction of size is explained. (MN)

Ways of using calculators to presents the concept and methodology of concurrent processing are discussed. Several problems that could be used to compare sequential versus concurrent processing are presented. (MK)

Described is an approach to computational matrix algebra that takes advantage of a high quality, low cost microcomputer software package. The examples and applications discussed focus on matrix multiplication. (Author/CW)