tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post1374235925572521886..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: How Not to Communicate MathematicsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-50911466330525795262009-01-14T03:14:00.000-05:002009-01-14T03:14:00.000-05:00Thanks for the info Takis. The push to money-makin...Thanks for the info Takis. The push to money-making was well under way when I was doing my PhD at Uni in the mid-90s. An interesting tale was told to me about a certain department at my Uni having a very generous electricity contract cancelled as they were using some of the electricity for commercial purposes...<BR/><BR/>On the RAE thing, point taken. I certainly seemed to be a larger problem in the eyes of the students in my Uni at the time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-17696181979827692862009-01-12T00:10:00.000-05:002009-01-12T00:10:00.000-05:00nice blue eyes O:nice blue eyes O:Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-64744840529771264042009-01-09T14:34:00.000-05:002009-01-09T14:34:00.000-05:00yea-mon:There is a big difference though between u...yea-mon:<BR/><BR/>There is a big difference though between university teaching (at, say, undergraduate level) and presenting an abstract of your paper. Presumably, the latter is for a technical specialized audience. So we don't expect the authors to explain every little detail. Despite this, we notice that the the video abstracts may be unintelligible even to specialists due to, say, poor articulation, but also poor exposition of what the paper is about. It requires some skill to explain your paper in 2-3 minutes.<BR/><BR/>Now, about your comment on UK education, I happen to be professor at a UK university. It is clear to me that many (not all, but very many) UK universities have reduced education to money-making business, especially by introducing programs at a vocational level. The issue is not the research ratings (RAE); this is not what hurts the system most. There are other, more major, problems which I cannot discuss here.Takis Konstantopouloshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14675216467783238403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-27205200228558496802009-01-09T10:26:00.000-05:002009-01-09T10:26:00.000-05:00The problem typified in the video is common in Phy...The problem typified in the video is common in Physics too. At university we had wizards of the field teaching us - the only problem was that they skipped so many steps in their lectures that only the students in their tutorial classes could have a hope of understanding their lectures. For the lecturers it was as simple as A...Z - we were wondering what happened to B-to-Y!<BR/><BR/>This was exacerbated later by the UK government insisting that only research ratings be the judge of university excellence in the country. A lot of good teachers were shown the door...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-12381066630333638242009-01-08T15:53:00.000-05:002009-01-08T15:53:00.000-05:00Takis, I'm sure you're right that there are worse ...Takis, I'm sure you're right that there are worse examples. I was only commenting on Connes' because it was picked out by the editor as a particularly <I>good</I> example of the genre.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-41361739159228504962009-01-08T11:19:00.000-05:002009-01-08T11:19:00.000-05:00This poses a more general question about the corre...This poses a more general question about the correct use if multimedia in mathematics and sciences more general. While people think that multimedia is the way to go, it is not easy at all to give a good presentation of your work if you have too many bells and whistles available. Take for example a mathematical talk created in power point with lots of colors, words that appear and disappear, formulas that move, etc. I maintain that you need to have abilities beyond mathematics to do it properly so as it is not offending to the (my) eyes and ears; otherwise, stick to chalk and board.<BR/><BR/>As for the video abstracts, I don't think that the example of Alain Connes is the worst one. I watched a few and had a hard time understanding what was being said. Look at <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWdmYvdf5Jg&feature=channel_page" REL="nofollow">this</A>: Arithmetic of the Ramanujan-Gollnitz-Gordon continued fraction. First, the accent (very strong Korean) is hard to understand--harder than the French of Connes. Second, he says (I think he does--it's impossible to hear the words continued fraction): "Let nu of tau be the continued fraction defined as follows" and then he moves his hand over a formula. Now, I can hardly SEE what the formula is. The whole video suffers from similar problems. What is the point?Takis Konstantopouloshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14675216467783238403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-24835135528099827072009-01-04T19:36:00.000-05:002009-01-04T19:36:00.000-05:00I would heartily support you in an attempt to crea...I would heartily support you in an attempt to create your own video abstract of a recent paper, whether for that journal or otherwise. More generally, this is something we'd like to do in the department as a form of public outreach.isohedralhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03189502728580537224noreply@blogger.com