I've enjoyed seeing developers report themselves as on a "leave of
absence." I've just back from a leave myself, but failed to notify
everyone in advance that I would be gone. So I will correct the
bureaucratic oversight by filing a report on my time away. ;-)
I spent October and November at the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences (AIMS), in Cape Town, South Africa. I taught a 3-week course
(2 hours a day, 5 days a week) titled "Applied Linear Algebra with
Sage" [1]. The students were in AIMS' Postgraduate Diploma course
[2]. They were 55 students from across all of Africa, all with
undergraduate degrees, and plans to continue their studies in
mathematics or physics at the graduate level. The Institute is housed
in an old hotel, so students and lecturers all live, eat, work and
study in the building. The location is idyllic - it is one block away
from "Surfer's Corner," which is where the long white-sand beach of
the northern border of False Bay gives way to the Cape Peninsula,
which culminates in the Cape of Good Hope.
AIMS runs entirely on open-source software and there is an emphasis on
Sage. It is quite pleasing to walk into the computer lab to see the
students all working with LaTeX, Python, Sage and a variety of other
standard tools. Students really appreciated the power of Sage. One
student from Egypt told me how he had once multiplied together two
10x10 matrices, by hand! So I really enjoyed exposing these students
to the capabilities of Sage, and I expect they will continue to
promote its use as they move on to new institutions and new positions
in the years ahead.
There is an initiative to create 14 more such centers across Africa
[3], which has attracted $20 million in funding from Canada and $3
million from Goggle. Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Ghana (in that
order) seem poised to be the first countries to act. So there should
be a continued need for visiting lecturers with knowledge of Sage.
The teaching is quite intense (two hours of lecture, plus lab time in
the afternoon and evening), but there is a group of teaching
assistants to mark assignments and for the courses early in the year,
there are no examinations given. I enjoyed the chance to structure a
course with such a heavy dose of Sage.
Regulars will notice that Jan Groenewald regularly posts reminders
about AIMS being interested in lecturers with Sage experience. Feel
free to ask me any questions you might have, or ask Jan. Much more
info at [4].
{1] http://users.aims.ac.za/~beezer/course.html
{2] http://www.aims.ac.za/en/programmes/postgraduate-diploma
[3] http://www.aims.ac.za/en/programmes/nexteinstein-initiative
[4] http://aims.ac.za
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