16.9.05
FLOPS 2006
The call for papers for FLOPS 2006 is now out.
FLOPS benefits from an eclectic mix of FP and LP papers, one of
the few venues where the two communities get together.
It should be a congenial meeting, situated under Mt Fuji.
We have two excellent invited speakers.
Peter van Roy, on Mozart
Guy Steele, on Fortress (just confirmed)
Do come!
FLOPS benefits from an eclectic mix of FP and LP papers, one of
the few venues where the two communities get together.
It should be a congenial meeting, situated under Mt Fuji.
We have two excellent invited speakers.
Peter van Roy, on Mozart
Guy Steele, on Fortress (just confirmed)
Do come!
Ronnie Brown: Allow Beautiful Minds to Thrive
Copyright 2005 TSL Education Limited
The Times Higher Education Supplement
September 16, 2005
SECTION: LETTER; No.1709; Pg.17
LENGTH: 448 words
HEADLINE: Allow Beautiful Minds To Thrive
BYLINE: Ronnie Brown
BODY:
The British Association for the Advancement of Science warns that the research
assessment exercise does not recognise the importance of the public
communication of science ("Scientists want time to talk", September 9).
Experience in the mathematics faculty at Bangor was that the Teaching Quality
Assessment did not recognise it either.
This is a kind of travesty. Exploration, exposition and communication have for
centuries been recognised as essential to the progress of science.
Where would we be without Euclid's marvellous compilation of the geometry of his
day? Galileo, Faraday, Poincare, Klein, Hilbert, Einstein, Hoyle and Feynman
have all made public communication, and often disagreement with authority, an
important part of their work.
Our aim for the popularisation of mathematics has been, to modify Science
Minister Lord Sainsbury's words in the same issue of The Times Higher, to show
the public, students and the Government not only the important role that
mathematics plays in society, but also how it evolves.
Mathematics progresses partly through the solution of problems, but also through
clarification and good exposition, providing a developing language for
description, verification, deduction and calculation. It makes the difficult
easy. It works over a long timescale. It shows new possibilities through gradual
conceptual advance. It formulates new problems.
So mathematics is a foundation of the modern technological society. It is a
considerable challenge to try to show advanced mathematics from an elementary
viewpoint.
Some results of our work in popularisation of mathematics at Bangor over the
past 20 years may be seen on our website www.popmath.org.uk. We have had strong
support from, among others, the patrons of the sculptor John Robinson, for
promoting his Symbolic Sculptures.
An unplanned consequence has been sculptures by Robinson at, for example,
Bangor, Cambridge, Durham and Macquarie universities.
This supports the aim of associating mathematics and science with art, and
demonstrates art as a mode of symbolising an idea.
Work in communicating to children and the general public ideas in mathematics
has helped us to analyse and express our programme, to communicate mathematical
concepts to fellow scientists and students, and so to interdisciplinary
collaboration.
For the future of the UK, the public communication of science and mathematics
should be supported financially and in career structure, and be part of the
assessment of the success of a university and of the vitality of research and
teaching teams.
Ronnie Brown Emeritus professor of mathematics University of Wales, Bangor
The Times Higher Education Supplement
September 16, 2005
SECTION: LETTER; No.1709; Pg.17
LENGTH: 448 words
HEADLINE: Allow Beautiful Minds To Thrive
BYLINE: Ronnie Brown
BODY:
The British Association for the Advancement of Science warns that the research
assessment exercise does not recognise the importance of the public
communication of science ("Scientists want time to talk", September 9).
Experience in the mathematics faculty at Bangor was that the Teaching Quality
Assessment did not recognise it either.
This is a kind of travesty. Exploration, exposition and communication have for
centuries been recognised as essential to the progress of science.
Where would we be without Euclid's marvellous compilation of the geometry of his
day? Galileo, Faraday, Poincare, Klein, Hilbert, Einstein, Hoyle and Feynman
have all made public communication, and often disagreement with authority, an
important part of their work.
Our aim for the popularisation of mathematics has been, to modify Science
Minister Lord Sainsbury's words in the same issue of The Times Higher, to show
the public, students and the Government not only the important role that
mathematics plays in society, but also how it evolves.
Mathematics progresses partly through the solution of problems, but also through
clarification and good exposition, providing a developing language for
description, verification, deduction and calculation. It makes the difficult
easy. It works over a long timescale. It shows new possibilities through gradual
conceptual advance. It formulates new problems.
So mathematics is a foundation of the modern technological society. It is a
considerable challenge to try to show advanced mathematics from an elementary
viewpoint.
Some results of our work in popularisation of mathematics at Bangor over the
past 20 years may be seen on our website www.popmath.org.uk. We have had strong
support from, among others, the patrons of the sculptor John Robinson, for
promoting his Symbolic Sculptures.
An unplanned consequence has been sculptures by Robinson at, for example,
Bangor, Cambridge, Durham and Macquarie universities.
This supports the aim of associating mathematics and science with art, and
demonstrates art as a mode of symbolising an idea.
Work in communicating to children and the general public ideas in mathematics
has helped us to analyse and express our programme, to communicate mathematical
concepts to fellow scientists and students, and so to interdisciplinary
collaboration.
For the future of the UK, the public communication of science and mathematics
should be supported financially and in career structure, and be part of the
assessment of the success of a university and of the vitality of research and
teaching teams.
Ronnie Brown Emeritus professor of mathematics University of Wales, Bangor
15.9.05
LINQ
From Jeremy Yallop:
There are facilities for "XML programming" as well, including querying XML data. They even "borrowed" our name!
The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET
Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and
transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native
language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take
advantage of these capabilities.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/
(via http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/967)
There are facilities for "XML programming" as well, including querying XML data. They even "borrowed" our name!
9.9.05
Jeremy's Links demo page
New page of Links demos, contrasting two ways to do "todo" lists, state in the client and state in the server, and showing off our new syntax for specifying whether code executes on server or client.
