Rob - thanks for continuing to post on this issue. I have been
mentioning AIMS a lot to my students this semester - as a reminder
that in places outside the US, math can be seen as an opportunity, not
a chore.
A couple questions I think are worth addressing is whether their
activities are usually during the US school year, and whether
particular applied expertise is needed (my sense was that the
institutes are planned to be fairly applied?). Marshall also taught
there once, right?
Great! Something to give thanks for today is this initiative.
- kcrisman
On Nov 24, 5:08 pm, Rob Beezer <goo...@beezer.cotse.net> wrote:
> 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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