This past December, I wrote a blog post about the review process at Bates and tenure and pre-tenure reviews in general. Last week I turned in my fourth year review dossier, and I thought this would be the perfect time for a follow-up post. Continue reading
At the workshop on Hypergeometric Motives, the view from my group's table during the afternoon problem session. Hard to see, but from left to right: John Tate, Philip Candelas, Henri Cohen, and Mark Watkins.
Conferences in mathematics come in many forms: from huge events like the the Joint Mathematics Meetings, to smaller gatherings focusing on a more specific area (for example, complex and p-adic dynamics). The traditional conference will have many talks, some keynote and maybe some smaller break-away simultaneous sessions. These are good places to exchange ideas and find out what other people are working on. But my favorite type of conference is not the traditional one, and in fact I am one of those people who starts getting distracted when a talk hits about 30 minutes (of course, this always depends on the topic, speaker, and the level of caffeine in my system). My favorite type of mathematical gathering is actually the workshop. I attended three this summer, and in this post I will write a bit about why I like workshops so much and then more specifically about each one. Continue reading
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that goes: “I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.” This proverb has basically become the main mantra of Inquiry Based Learning teachers. As mentioned in a few of my previous blogs, I have taught many classes using an inquiry-based style of teaching. This is not something I came up with on my own, and I still find it quite useful to talk to other IBL users and what they have learned from their own experiences. I also really enjoy seeing scholarship about how this method is working and what could be improved. In this post, I will not write exactly about Inquiry Based Learning, but about my experiences attending the annual IBL conference known as the “Legacy of R.L. Moore Conference” held in Austin, Texas. Continue reading
