Posted by martin on
Saturday, 03 May 2008 at 17:17
A substantial part of the past couple of weeks was occupied by CATAM, the computational projects for the Maths Tripos. For each project you write some computer programs for mathematical purposes, then write a report on the results you obtained and the mathematics involved. (This is the only part of the Maths Tripos assessment not done by exams.) This year's projects were more interesting than last year's - at least the ones I did contained a greater mathematical content, and got me interested in elliptic curves. I also did my programming this year in Scala, the language I learned last summer, to try out something different - I have never been entirely satisfied with any programming language for doing mathematics. (And now that I have got into functional programming I have moved the goalposts. I did my CATAM projects in an almost pure functional style, but there were a few places where I couldn't see any efficient way to do that.)
The deadline for that was on Wednesday, and I have finished my supervisions from last term yesterday, so now all that is left until the exams at the start of June is revision. That seems like a long time but there is a lot to revise (and longer than before since in previous years I did some lectures in Easter term).
Tags catam, programming, scala, tripos
Posted by martin on
Thursday, 10 April 2008 at 20:03
I have been back in Cambridge for a week now, having come back for the "Maths Olympiad":http://www.bmoc.maths.org/ training camp which ran last Thursday to Monday. My role was to discuss things with the school-age students when they needed someone with more mathematical experience, and especially to hang around in problem sessions and provide hints. Of course that assumes that I can do the problems myself - sometimes greater mathematical maturity makes that easier, sometimes it has got harder because I am out of practice with Olympiad style problems.
I also took a session on Euclidean geometry, the first time I have attempted to teach a group of people maths. This was quite easy teaching, because mostly I just had to give out a sheet of problems and let people try them. (I have collected up a couple of thousand problems from the IMO training I have gone through over the years, so I had plenty to choose from.) I did start off by spending about 10 minutes revising the basic facts about Euclidean transformations, which would have been familiar to most people, and then showing them one particular nice transformation which noone seemed to know (despite it being quite useful - I even used it in the 2005 IMO). My attempt to prove the properties of this treansformation interactively was not too successful, as people proposed a different proof from what I knew, and I was not fast enough to keep up.
I now have two weeks in Cambridge until term starts. This weekend I am going to the "London Lindy Exchange":http://www.londonlindyexchange.com/.
Tags imo, lindy, teaching
Posted by martin on
Sunday, 16 March 2008 at 13:55
Term has finished now, and I am going home to Belfast tomorrow. I took fewer courses this term than last term, in order to have more time. Together with stepping down as TCMS President, this seems to have worked, although in the past few weeks the maths we have been doing has got much harder.
In the past week (plus a few days), I have been to three very different musicals: _Kiss Me Kate_ by Clare College Music Society (with Mary-Ellen in the leading role), _Me and My Girl_ in Magdalene (directed by Maria, a maths friend) and _Into the Woods_ at the ADC. They were all pretty good. Last night there was a TCMS concert in Chapel, featuring the chapel choir singing English choral music, and then the chapel choir joined with the Trinity Singers (TCMS' big non-audition chorus) to sing Stanfords' _Te Deum_ and Parry's _I was Glad_, all directed by Stephen Layton. It was a great success, and the Singers enjoyed working with Stephen and the chapel choir.
I have also been to three formal dinners: last Sunday in Trinity for someone's birthday, on Monday in Pembroke with a group of people who bought Trinity Ball tickets for Pembroke mathmos, and on Friday it was the commemoration dinner in Trinity (a grand dinner to which Scholars are invited, at which all the people who have given money to the college are remembered, starting with Edward II in 1317).
Tags musicals, tcms
Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 04 March 2008 at 20:50
The world is full of unfinished websites (in particular, the world of Cambridge societies, but I am sure it applies elsewhere too). The "Archimedeans":http://www.archim.org.uk/ have had a "new design":http://www.archim.org.uk/?test (for the same content) for about three years, but it has never been officially adopted. The person who made it left the Society a couple of years ago, but intended to finish it off (although I don't know what still needs to be done); since he has now left Cambridge, presumably it will be forgotten.
For TCMS, our IT officer, who developed the "current website":http://www.tcms.org.uk/, graduated a few years ago, but continued as the society's IT officer. He runs a small software consulting business, and the website is hosted on their server. This has worked OK, but has always meant inconvenience every time a change has to be made, and noone has ever completed some of the missing features of the site. Jon resigned last year, and I have now taken over responsibility for the website. I have been working on a new site, as the current arrangement remains inconvenient for both Jon and us.
I chose not to remain on the TCMS committee because after two years, I have done my bit of feeling responsible when the society fails and of practical help at concerts, and so that I don't either become frustrated or step on people's toes if things are done differently from what I would do. I fear that this puts me into the position that I regard as the problem in the cases above: developing a new website for the society, without otherwise being involved. Nevertheless, as the person who knows what is going on now, I think it is the best arrangement.
Tags archimedeans, tcms, website
Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 19 February 2008 at 17:09
Well it seems I have let it go for ages without posting anything. It is now week 5, which means we are just over half way through down. This term I am just doing four courses, because I didn't want to work as hard as I had to for last year's six courses.
The courses are: Algebraic Topology (using algebraic techniques to show that different types of object cannot be deformed into each other), Set Theory and Logic (formalising logic and the foundations of mathematics), Geometry and Groups (symmetries in normal 2 and 3 dimensional space, and the more exotic world of hyperbolic space - lots of this appears in Escher's pictures) and Number Fields (how concepts like prime numbers generalise to bigger sets of numbers than the usual integers). It becomes increasingly difficult to give one sentence descriptions of the courses as they build up on top of earlier concepts (e.g. topological spaces).
Last week I just stepped down as President of the Music Society. It was fun and I learnt a lot from it, but it was also hard work and I am quite relieved to give it up. I am confident that Vicky and the new committee will do a very good job. I have also recently become Treasurer of the Cambridge Lindy Hoppers.
Tags lindy, tcms, tripos