Lucas Gagne Projects

Here is a link to my website, hosted by PythonAnywhere.  Use the password 'guest'. I built this web application from scratch as a hobby project to teach myself the basics.  The goal was to use the game as a teaching resource for the high school consumer math class I currently teach.  The board game 'Life' ends with everybody a millionaire, so I wanted something a little more realistic so that students could see the consequences of their decisions (or lack of decisions).  I have introduced it to some of my students in the Intro to CS: Python class I facilitate, but mostly to show them what is possible with a little bit of grit.  It is a fully functional game, albeit with some bugs (and not a lot of polish).  So far it is not flashy enough for my Juniors and Seniors in consumer math, but I'll keep working on them! I learned a ton about Python, Flask, requests and the basics of web applications, HTML and CSS during this project, and there is a ton more ...

Here is a link to my Prime Play project. Primes are relatively simple to define, and yet a formula to produce a guaranteed prime is still unknown.  I caught on to a pattern that seems to work for small numbers, but needs more testing for big numbers.  This project is a collection of Python scripts (apps essentially) that constitute different methods of finding primes.  I use the classic 'brute force' method to compare the computational efficiency of the method I'm working on.  I still need to generalize my method further before I can officially call my experiment a failure.  So far I'm not expecting a Nobel Prize. This project has made use of my knowledge of combinatorics, Python (especially classes and an iteration module), and algorithms.

Here is a link to my text message encoder.  It was designed with Python on Repl.it (a free online platform). Here is a link to the new tkinter version. I once did a project in a History of Mathematics class on the Enigma machine, a World War II encryption device, and how it's decryption helped the Allies overcome the Axis powers.  I learned the basics of how it worked for my class presentation, and the idea has fascinated me since.  While my enciphering machine may be less impressive than the Enigma, it is fully functional and can successfully encipher and decipher text messages.  My wife and I occasionally send each other secret messages over email during our lunches, and it works perfectly. Due to the multifaceted gear-like method it works in, I gave it an equally mysterious and imposing name - Clocktower. A simple cipher just slides the characters over a few positions.  A more complicated cipher can also jumble them slightly (non-randomly of course, s...

The following are links to the presentation and paper for ANM I The following are links to the presentation and paper  for ANM II The above two projects were completed as a graduate student taking Applied Numerical Methods.  The projects (and class) were centered around using MatLab to solve differential and integral problems.  As the only graduate student in the group, I took a leadership role in both projects, organizing and delegating as necessary.

Here is a  link  to a project I did for Combinatorics during my Master's degree. We had a lot of fun presenting our findings, after a lot of hard work using MatLab and our combinatorics and statistics skills to find the number of possible arrangements for the ships in the game of Battleship.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find my original MatLab code, but I'll post it if I find it!

Here is a link to my Undergraduate Honors Research Project.  Below is my Abstract. Abstract International students are a small and diverse student population present in any sizable American university. One of the greatest obstacles in their path is the acquisition of the English language. English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs, such as the English Language Institute (ELI) at the University of Akron, attempt to address this problem. By studying how this student population progresses in their academic studies, EAP programs and their associated universities can make well-informed decisions on how best to serve their English Language Learners. One way to study International students is through the use of a Markov model based on university data. The statistically calibrated model is helpful in that it can reveal at what stage of their studies students are struggling the most or succeeding the most. Our results show that ELI students are well prepared, since international stude...