Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the University has instruction to cancel all in-person events through the Spring semester to adhere to city and state orders limiting public gatherings. Events still running must now take place Online— listed events will include a link in which one may access the Online webspace:

To view Mrs. Harter’s defense, enter her Online chatroom via Microsoft Team’s— it will open at 12:00 pm on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.

Fitting of Coupled Population Data Through Estimation of Parameters Using the Least Squares Method

Mrs. Jessica Harter
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
MS Graduate Student

“The population of two types of bacteria found in the Gulf Coast of Florida, V.chagasii and V. harveyi, is best described by the Lotka-Voltera Competition model. Using data gathered in experiments conducted by Bury and Picket (2015), we obtain better parameter estimates using numerical methods in R. In particular, we find a numerical solution to the coupled set of ODEs and minimize the mean squared error in order to obtain the optimal parameter estimates that will fit the data best. In order to get a sense of accuracy of these parameter estimates, we use bootstrap estimation to compute the component wise standard deviations and construct confidence intervals for the estimates.”

Committee Members:
Profs. Daniel Gervini (Advisor); Gabriella Pinter & David Spade

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