Math Department (Thesis/2009-10)

Random Walk

Under the direction of: Jue Wang

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''A drunken man will find his way home, but a drunken bird may get lost forever.''

A random walk is a mathematical formalization of a process consisting of a sequence of discrete random steps of fixed length. The random thermal perturbations in a liquid are responsible for a random walk phenomenon known as Brownian motion, and the collisions of molecules in a gas are a random walk responsible for diffusion. Random walks have interesting mathematical properties that vary greatly depending on the dimension in which the walk occurs. We will explore 1D, 2D and 3D random walks, and find out the bird's chance of returning home.

Students need to know (or will have to learn) some basic probability and programming in Matlab.

This topic is suitable for a one-term thesis.

Math Department web pages Created: 11 May 2009 Last modified: May 11, 2009 10:31:49 AM Comments to: math@union.edu

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