The Royal Statistical Society have announced ‘Show me the data’ events at the Conservative and Labour party conferences this autumn. Each conference will host three meetings relating to “the importance of interpreting and understanding statistics”, run by the RSS with the Alliance for Useful Evidence and Ipsos Mori.
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Your suggestions of iPad apps for university mathematics teaching
I asked in the previous post for suggestions of iPad apps that I could use to help with my job as a university lecturer in mathematics. I asked specifically about annotating PDF files I had made using LaTeX and recording such activity. More generally, I asked what other apps might be useful to my job and for other uses I should be thinking about. People made suggestions via comments on that post, Twitter and Google+. Thanks to all who responded. Here is a summary of the recommendations I received.
iPad apps for university mathematics teaching: your suggestions please
New game, everyone! Work have bought me an iPad. I have so far discovered this is basically a touch screen interface through which I can write email, read Twitter and play pinball, but I’ve heard a rumour that it can do even more than that. I’d like you to suggest what else I might do with it.
Explaining things
I have discovered, or perhaps learned how to articulate, something fundamental: I like explaining things. Allow me to explain.
26th July 2004–23rd July 2013
Yesterday, with my tongue certainly in cheek, I tweeted to the BBC Breaking News Twitter account that I had handed in my thesis, with a promise of a press release to follow. Taking the lead from my over-inflated sense of self importance, Christian Perfect posted this news to The Aperiodical News feed as ‘Breaking: Peter Rowlett has submitted his doctoral thesis‘.
Recently, in order to complete the submission paperwork, I went through my PhD files and stumbled upon my original enrolment confirmation. Before the brave new world of online enrolment and online fee payment, I had to go to an office and give money to receive a stamp on a piece of paper. The enrolment slip asks me to keep it safe, which apparently I did.
#TweetMyThesis
#TweetMyThesis E-assessment is limited. I propose individualised work marked by hand to reduce plagiarism in HE maths coursework. It works!
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 8, 2013
#TweetMyThesis is the latest in a line of similar initiatives asking you to condense your thesis into 140 characters. This time it was proposed by Times Higher Education on Twitter. I’m also aware of #TweetYourThesis, #tweetyrPhD, #TweetYourPhD and numerous individual conference versions. I’m unsure whether 2010’s #BUthesis is the first, but it might be.
My title remains ‘A Partially-automated Approach to the Assessment of Mathematics in Higher Education’. My deadline is less than three weeks away.
Particularly mathematical Birthday Honours 2013
The Birthday Honours 2013 have been announced, and an extensive list has been posted on Wikipedia. The big name is Andrew Dilnot, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority and inaugural presenter of More or Less, who is knighted “for services to Economics and Economic Policy”. Apart from this, the list on Wikipedia contains one other mention of maths or stats that I spotted, John C. Butcher, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Auckland, was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit “for services to mathematics”. His website lists his research interests as “numerical methods for the solution of ordinary differential equations”.
That’s all that I can see, which doesn’t compare well with the nine particularly mathematical New Years Honours this year. Does anyone have any to add?
More information
UK Government Birthday Honours lists 2013.