Approximation theory

The theory of continued fractions goes possibly as far back as 300 B.C. to Euclid. Some
consider continued fractions as part of the "lost mathematics". I came across continued
fractions for the first time while taking a graduate math class and I was amazed as how
beautiful the representation of some numbers were using them and also how easy it was
to understand the theory by making pictures. As an educator, I want to share this
knowledge with my students and make it something that they could discover, manipulate,
and appreciate.
This paper is divided m three sections. The first deals with the basic theory and
definitions of continued fractions. The second shows how to use technology, especially
Dynamic Geometry Software to make the basic theory accessible to students in middle
and high school. The third section gives some reflections of my experience working with
students on continued fractions.

In this dissertation, we consider six Prufer-like conditions on acommutative ring R. These conditions form a hierarchy. Being a Prufer ring is not a local property: a Prufer ring may not remain a Prufer ring when localized at a prime or maximal ideal. We introduce a seventh condition based on this fact and extend the hierarchy. All the conditions of the hierarchy become equivalent in the case of a domain, namely a Prufer domain. We also seek the relationship of the hierarchy with strong Prufer rings.

A well-known long standing problem in combinatorics and statistical mechanics is to find the generating function for self-avoiding walks (SAW) on a two-dimensional lattice, enumerated by perimeter. A SAW is a sequence of moves on a square lattice which does not visit the same point more than once. It has been considered by more than one hundred researchers in the pass one hundred years, including George Polya, Tony Guttmann, Laszlo Lovasz, Donald Knuth, Richard Stanley, Doron Zeilberger, Mireille Bousquet-Mlou, Thomas Prellberg, Neal Madras, Gordon Slade, Agnes Dit- tel, E.J. Janse van Rensburg, Harry Kesten, Stuart G. Whittington, Lincoln Chayes, Iwan Jensen, Arthur T. Benjamin, and many others. More than three hundred papers and a few volumes of books were published in this area. A SAW is interesting for simulations because its properties cannot be calculated analytically. Calculating the number of self-avoiding walks is a common computational problem. A recently proposed model called prudent self-avoiding walks (PSAW) was first introduced to the mathematics community in an unpublished manuscript of Pra, who called them exterior walks. A prudent walk is a connected path on square lattice such that, at each step, the extension of that step along its current trajectory will never intersect any previously occupied vertex. A lattice path composed of connected horizontal and vertical line segments, each passing between adjacent lattice points. We will discuss some enumerative problems in self-avoiding walks, lattice paths and walks with several step vectors. Many open problems are posted.