Journal Ranking — the Second Incarnation

Australian academia is again in the throes of a journal ranking exercise.  We went through this last year in preparation for the previous government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF), but the new government wants to redo things for its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).  Again the journals must be placed into four tiers — the [...]

Gazette Issue 3 (July 2008) now online

Issue 3 of the Gazette for 2008 is now available online. Many Gazette readers will, no doubt, have experienced the `culture of numbers’ that has resulted from the growing reliance on quantitative methods to measure the quality of academic research.  In this issue we are very pleased to include a report from the International Mathematics [...]

Maths Matters

[This opinion piece is being submitted to the "Maths Matters" column of the Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society.] On 17 March 2008, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) at Toowoomba announced proposals to cut staff at the Department of Mathematics and Computing (which consists of the disciplines of mathematics, statistics, and computing) by almost [...]

Australian 2008 IMO results

The Australian Mathematics Trust reports that Australian IMO team has just won 5 silver medals and one bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Madrid, with a country ranking of 19th out of 97; this is Australia’s best showing in a few years.  Congrats to the Aussie team for their efforts (and for the [...]

2008 Mathematics Ashes won by Australia

The Australian Mathematics Trust reports that the inaugural Mathematics Ashes has been won by the Australian IMO team.  (Thanks to Peter Taylor for the news.)

Interview with Clio Cresswell

There was a nice extended interview (almost an hour in length) on ABC classic FM on Monday by Margaret Throsby with Clio Cresswell (a senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Sydney), being a light conversation about music, maths, and what the latter can offer to the layperson.  The audio for that interview can [...]

National Numeracy Review

The Australian is reporting today that the National Numeracy Review, commissioned two years ago by the Council of Australian Governments, has finished its final report (a background paper to the review can be found here, and a discussion paper with terms of reference can be found here.  Here is AMSI’s submission to the review).  The [...]

7:30 report on Tuesday

I’ve just been informed by Peter Taylor from the AMT that there should be a piece airing in tonight’s Tuesday’s 7:30 report on the Australian IMO team that is flying out to Lisbon today.  The transcript (and video) is now available here. One of the members of that team, Max Menzies (who was also on [...]