Comments on: Mathematics at Flinders

By: BASHU ZERGA

BASHU ZERGA — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:53:53 +0000

I AM REALY SURPRISED WHEN I SEE THIS SCHOLARSHIP FROM AUSTRALIA .AND I AM REALY SURE I WILL JION THIS SCHOLARSHIP.

By: Prof Citation

Prof Citation — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:34:45 +0000

I am not surprised. When I worked at Flinders, all that mattered for promotions was the *number* of publications. Quality, citations, and so forth were unheard of. Indeed, even today, many of what the university describes as *world-leading researchers* have only a few citations from a large number of papers written over several years. But these people did, and, I imagine, still do sit in judgement over others. One hopes that the new VC will change things. Too late for me in my retirement ….

By: Mathematician

Mathematician — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:16:24 +0000

To Egghead: I recently discovered Google Scholar and decided to check out many who did well at the time when we mathematicians were held back. Interesting. Some people who were declared to be world-class researchers by promotions committee barely register. I take a microscope to Google Scholar and find only 2 or 3 citations.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:12:25 +0000

Nothing, of course. It’s just a cheap rhetorical device

By: Former Flinders Guy

Former Flinders Guy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:25:34 +0000

To DS: “CS as an academic discipline would be much better served if undergraduate degrees in it were not offered at all, replaced by a minor sequence in pure maths programs.” An “interesting” thought, but how about we get back to the reality of what CS actually is?

People want to train programmers so that they can program. I have known many people with X and Y training who would run circles around the Z peers. How many solutions are there for F(X, Y, Z) = …. ? What does the existence of each of those solutions prove?

By: DS

DS — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:44:35 +0000

To FFG: You are, of course, right, linear algebra and numerical analysis courses would be infinitely more valuable in the curriculum than yet another course on database design or “intelligent agents”.

But the bigger question is why would one want to train “programmers” – programming is a commodity skill and in my opinion having a university major upon completion of which students haven’t had exposure to anything else is doing them a great disservice. I have known many people with mathematics and physics training who would run circles around their CS peers.

By: Former Flinders Guy

Former Flinders Guy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:03:21 +0000

PS. I forgot to add that linear algebra is the maths course at the top of many employers’ lists in the computer-ganes industry.

By: Former Flinders Guy

Former Flinders Guy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:49:36 +0000

On The Untold Benefits of Numerical Analysis 101:

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/disasters.html

http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/nw/users/vuik/wi211/disasters.html

By: Former Flinders Guy

Former Flinders Guy — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:42:13 +0000

To DS and others: One does not have to be a mathematician to be a good programmer. But good programming requires the sort of logical mind that is most easily developed via mathematics of any sort.

For more direct links, i.e. where a knowledge of maths is explicitly useful, consider programming for computer games, a huge industry in the UK. The latest surveys of employers in the games industry show that almost all want their employees to have more maths at university, and they are taking appropriate action. See

http://www.developmag.com/news/30713/Tiga-calls-for-UK-to-improve-British-education

For yet another example, go to Google and type “computer arithmetic tragedies”. This should give you some examples of “tragedies”, but a better search will yield real tragedies—where there has been loss of life. What is common in all these cases is that the programmers do not appear to have taken Numerical Analysis 101, which should be required for anyone writing scientific software.

By: DS

DS — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:06:26 +0000

Indeed in many ways CS as an academic discipline would be much better served if undergraduate degrees in it were not offered at all, replaced by a minor sequence in pure maths programs. Most of the useful theoretical content as currently taught in undergrad CS could be compressed into a single semester, if only students had adequate maths background.

Students are wasting time going to university simply to learn programming and it is painful to see. Unfortunately too many faculty members are only too happy to make it appear a meaningful pursuit.