Find three published articles that can stand as exemplars of writing in your academic major (in other words, your discipline). Explain what makes them exemplary, and do so in a way that communicates your understanding of what is important to your discipline. What do people in your discipline discuss? What methodology or methodologies do they consider most effective? What methodologies do they consider legitimate? Do they use a form of English that is specialized or in some way distinct from the language you would find in a newspaper? -Research Requirements
ResearchMatthew McLaughlin
Cahill ,N. D., D'Errico,J. R., Narayan,D. A., Narayan, J. Y. (2002). Fibonacci Determinates. The Collage of Mathematics Journals, Vol.3 (No.3),221-225.
The article "Fibonacci Determinates" is about the appearance of the Fibonacci sequence within determinates of a special matrix raised to certain powers. The article begins by showing pictures of the researchers for the article and giving their basic backgrounds. The introduction helps to determine the ability of the researchers, showing that they are experts and are knowledgeable in the problem they are solving. In the article the method they find most persuasive in proving their discovery is through the use of logic, which is organized in a way that one could follow their reasoning. Within the article there is a specialized language. Words like matrix and the differing usage of the word diagonal, refer to different things within the context of the article that would look different outside of the article. Generally the language is easy to follow given that the special language is understood, allowing others who read it to come to grasp the concept they are trying to teach.
de Moivre, A.(1698). A Method of Extracting the Root of an Infinite Equation. Philosophical Transactions,vol. 20, 190-193.
The article "A Method of Extracting the Root of an Infinite Equation" is written by a well known mathematician, and can be thus highly credible. However the text is hard to follow, and this is because it is a translation, as de Moivre was a French mathematician. Also the article is in an old form of English, which would often use the letter f in place of the letter s, however this is only a problem now because of a change in English spelling. From this it can be determined that any paper, not just math should use a language that is similar to today's accepted grammar. The fact that this article appears directly before a story in the same journal discredits it to some extent, however this can be excused as the use of printed material was still in its infancy at that point of time. The year at which a mathematical article is printed is another indicator of quality of work, as the older it is the more likely it is outdated, meaning that the proof may have been since disproven or re-evaluated to different limits.
Goldston, D. (2000). ON THE PAIR CORRELATION OF ZEROS OF THE RIEMANN ZETA-FUNCTION. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, vol. 80(issue 1), 31-49.
In the article, one of the oldest problems faced in mathematics is solved. Typically in math articles, mathematicians discuss proofs, either old or new, and try to improve on the past work of other mathematicians. In the article by Goldston, he credits the work of others in to helping him finalize a proof for the problem of twin prime conjectures. This makes his work highly credible and shows the overall effort of different mathematicians. The methodology in the article is a lot of mathematical proof followed with some phrases to either clarify or set limits to which the proof holds true, which helps the reader to understand the equations.