To Whom It May Concern

My name is Jason R. Lewis, and on behalf of myself and my co-author,

Robert W. Ellis, I would like to submit our paper, Investigations into the

Kaprekar Process, to Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal for

publication. The research for this paper was conducted from January 2001

to August 2001 and we finished writing the paper in January 2002. During

this time frame Mr. Ellis and I were undergraduate students majoring in

mathematics at East Tennessee State University.

I am a senior mathematics major at East Tennessee State University (ETSU),

and I will be graduating in May 2002. Robert Ellis graduated in December

2001 from ETSU with his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, and he

has started his first semester in the graduate program here at ETSU.

After graduating with my B.S. in May, I will be pursuing a Masters of

Science degree in Mathematics at ETSU. We began our research into the

Kaprekar Process as a research assignment for a junior/senior seminar

class taught by our department chair, Dr. Anant Godbole. After completing

one preliminary paper on this subject, we became very interested in this

problem and wished to explore it further. For our last research

assignment in this class we conducted further research into the Kaprekar

Process when applied to four- and five-digit numbers. We presented these

findings at the Sixth North Carolina Mini Conference on Graph Theory,

Combinatorics, and Computing at Appalachian State University in Boone,

North Carolina in April 2001. When we finished our assignments for this

class we found that we still had a great deal of unanswered questions, so

we asked our professor if we could conduct an independent study into this

problem over the summer and then write a paper in the fall about our

findings. He agreed to our proposal and after working the entire summer

and part of the fall on our research and spending the remainder of the

fall on writing our paper, we finally completed our independent study in

early January.

Dr. Anant Godbole, chairman of the Department of Mathematics at East

Tennessee State University, was our adviser on this paper, and he will be

acting as our reference for this paper. He may be reached either by email

at godbolea@etsu.edu or by telephone at (423) 439-5359

_____________

Dear Editors:

Robert Ellis, titled "Investigations into the Kaprekar Process", was

conducted independently under my supervision. The research began as

part of a class project in MATH 3090, Junior Seminar, and was

completed as part of an independent study project. The authors are

both currently seniors at ETSU, and the research was conducted in its

entirety while Lewis and Ellis were undergraduates.
I believe that the content of the paper is substantial. There are

several aspects that are new; these include the statistical analyses

and the generation of the complete tree for the 4-digit Kaprekar

process. The paper is certainly not at the level of research

conducted, say, by students in the Rose-Hulman REU program. This is

only to be expected since the REU group consists of the best students

nationwide. However, the Lewis-Ellis paper does represent among the

best work done by students at ETSU in recent years and is certainly

worthy of publication in the Rose Undergraduate Mathematics Journal.

My name and address appear below, as a signature to this email.

Anant Godbole

Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics,

Director, REU Program on Discrete Random Structures

East Tennessee State University,

Box 70663, Johnson City, TN 37614

423-439-5359; godbolea@etsu.edu; FAX: 423-439-8361

http://www.etsu.edu/math/godbole/anant.htm

REU webpage: http://www.etsu.edu/math/godbole/nsf.htm

--

Dear Prof Lautzenheiser:

are currently seniors" is not accurate. Roby Ellis graduated in

December 2001. However the independent study project was completed

in Fall 2001, when Roby and Jason *were* both seniors.