Vanden Bosch, Peter (Homeland Security Institute)

Peter Vanden Bosch
Homeland Security Institute
1 W Spring St
Alexandria, VA USA
22301

Phone: (719)660-8659
E-mail: petevandenbosch@gmail.com

Topics:

Introduction to Operations Research
High-School-level discussion of what OR is, why it's important. Contrasts/compares OR professionals to mathematicians, engineers, and scientists (Elementary)

Fixed Point: Introduction
High School level presentation on usefulness of fixed point approaches to root-finding, based on two Mathematics Teacher articles. (Elementary)

Design of Experiments: Introduction
High School level presentation on how to design and analyze a multivariate experiment. Carefully designed factorial experiments are a critical tool for scientists. Many science fair projects could be vastly improved if they adopted the methods introduced in this talk. (Elementary)

Optimization of Appointment Systems
This lecture provides a set of problems the speaker solved for his dissertation. It opened up many other areas of fruitful research that have not yet been pursued. He gives an overview of what's been done, why it's important, and what's left to be done. (Advanced)

Introduction to Resampling Statistics
Resampling (a catchall term for bootstrap, jackknife, permutation sampling, et al.) is a remarkably versatile and robust nonparametric approach to obtaining confidence intervals and significance. (Elementary to Advanced)

Good Graphics
The best analysis is worthless if it's communicated badly. How do we best present our results to those who may have "the fear of all sums?" How do we spot when displays are misleading? (Elementary.)

A Fractal Excursion
High school or middle school level. A curious extension of the Serpienski gasket ends up in chaos and an introduction to two-dimensional random walks.

Background:

Currently works for Homeland Security Institute as an analyst. Served in USAF 26 years, culminating as chief of analysis and technology advisor for USNORTHCOM and NORAD. Taught high school 1977-84. Pete has published articles on mathematics education, nuclear effects, stochastic processes, statistics, and numerical estimation.