This will just be a short post. It's basically a flag to myself in that I am going to promise to deliver something here and hopefully that will keep me to my promise. I've started to teach myself optimal control for ordinary differential equations. That is, looking at solving systems of ODEs which involve some "control" that is involved in some other quantity that we wish to optimise in some way.
For example, say we have an exponentially growing tumour (#cells is x) being treated with some drug (concentration u) such that the governing equation is
x'(t) = ax(t) - u(t), x(0)=0.
Say that drug is also harmful to healthy cells as well. Then we might wish to minimise both the tumour size at some endtime (T) and also the effects over time of the drug. eg:
min { x(T) + \int_0^T u^2 dt }.
So basically I'm looking into optimal control theory for such problems. It doesn't look too horrific actually. I tried looking at this years ago when I did my postdoc (my boss had published some papers on optimal treatment of tumours) but it was over my head. Now I think I can actually understand some of the material that's available on the subject and I think I can write about it myself.
The plan is to write some short notes on the topic that are understandable and make them available here soon (next couple of weeks). Then y'all can let me know what you think. yay :-)
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Day 65 - update
Things are coming together nicely!!! Some simple matlab-ing has led to some simulations that suit the needs of the paper perfectly! Outstanding!
Day 64-65
I went to bed last night at about 10.30. This is quite usual since the coming of Dan Jr. I don't tend to stay up late much at all for work or any other reason. Anyway, I sat in bed for about 30mins before realising I wasn't going to sleep. Ideas and mathsy stuff was running through my head - so I got up and started doing some work. I did a fair bit of work on the stability analysis (of steady states) for my 3 PDE model of Chlamydia infection model.
I decided that the work I did a few days ago was for an overly complicated model - I didn't see the point of having both an exponential death term (remnant from a previous version of the model) and a logistic growth term...so I've dumped the death in favour of the logistic growth. This also (of course) has the effect of somewhat simplifying the analysis/algebra for the stability work.
One of the great things about this place we live is the glass doors that I can use to write on...basically big enough to work like a blackboard. This is great for doing algebra and messy stuff that you want to scribble out and over the top of - like stability analysis and nondimensionalisation etc. It looks difficult to read, but it's actually ok once you focus. Particularly at night it is good to work with too.
So anyway, I worked on this until about 4am this morning which is basically unheard of for me these days. I really only went to bed then because I had hit the end of the algebraic work and I thought to bust out some matlab to start doing simulations and numerical work at this stage of the night was getting kind of ridiculous. I really should have kept going though - I felt fine waking at 7.30 this morning, so I'm sure I'd have survived.
Anyway, more tonight - I think I can finish off the draft of this in the next couple of days or so.
I decided that the work I did a few days ago was for an overly complicated model - I didn't see the point of having both an exponential death term (remnant from a previous version of the model) and a logistic growth term...so I've dumped the death in favour of the logistic growth. This also (of course) has the effect of somewhat simplifying the analysis/algebra for the stability work.
 |
| A little 3am mad scientist action. |
So anyway, I worked on this until about 4am this morning which is basically unheard of for me these days. I really only went to bed then because I had hit the end of the algebraic work and I thought to bust out some matlab to start doing simulations and numerical work at this stage of the night was getting kind of ridiculous. I really should have kept going though - I felt fine waking at 7.30 this morning, so I'm sure I'd have survived.
Anyway, more tonight - I think I can finish off the draft of this in the next couple of days or so.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Day 61 - Things will get in the way
So even on holidays I'm distracted. I spent a long time today doing algebra (stability analysis on the steady states of my PDE chlamydia model) which was really great (haven't done that in ages) but then at 5pm as I'm walking through the door bringing little Dan home, work calls. I had forgotten to rerank applications for the QUT vice chancellor's scholarships.
Rerank? Yes rerank. I already did it once. I had ranked all but about 7 of the fifty or so applications in my pile, all along the way thinking that some of the written statements and supporting materials didn't match. Then finally I realized that they were all wrong. The cover sheets with written statements had been given to me with the wrong supporting materials. I was so pissed. I was meaning to do this Friday before I left work, but forgot. So I've tried to do as much as I can tonight but will now have to go to work in the morning to finish it off.
The point is, even when things seemed to be going well, something came along and stuffed it up - now I will need to attempt to catch up with where I wanted to be somehow.
Although in good news my algebra on the stability analysis revealed an error in my previous work and a nice new result about the stability requirement for one of my steady states - yay!
Now off to read about the Ruth-Hurwitz stability criterion.
Rerank? Yes rerank. I already did it once. I had ranked all but about 7 of the fifty or so applications in my pile, all along the way thinking that some of the written statements and supporting materials didn't match. Then finally I realized that they were all wrong. The cover sheets with written statements had been given to me with the wrong supporting materials. I was so pissed. I was meaning to do this Friday before I left work, but forgot. So I've tried to do as much as I can tonight but will now have to go to work in the morning to finish it off.
The point is, even when things seemed to be going well, something came along and stuffed it up - now I will need to attempt to catch up with where I wanted to be somehow.
Although in good news my algebra on the stability analysis revealed an error in my previous work and a nice new result about the stability requirement for one of my steady states - yay!
Now off to read about the Ruth-Hurwitz stability criterion.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Day 60 - two months in
So, it's basically two months down today. I guess I'd say I'm reasonably satisfied with my progress even though I've really got nothing to show so far. Lots of different projects are progressing well and I've had a whole heap of new opportunities open up too. I have one completed manuscript (the one that's been rejected three times!), another of Masoum's very nearly there (needs a couple of pages cut down to meet the 10 page limit), and another three manuscripts nearly half written. I've also got two conference papers about 80% written.
I'm on holidays now for about 15 more days. I'm on recreation leave til Friday and then we have holidays until January 4 because QUT is closed for Christmas. Obviously there will be things going on like Christmas and so on, so I won't be working all the time and I have to take this into account when thinking up any plans or goals, but I'm still hoping to get a fair bit done this week in particular. My current aim is to resubmit the thrice-rejected paper, finish my CTAC paper and another chlamydia modeling paper by the time I return to work. Let's see how that goes!
I'm also planning to get right back on track with the projects of my phd students. Sometimes I feel that they really suffer with me having a dual job (ie my admin-ish job and my academic job)...actually it's more that they suffer because my time is constantly full of meetings. Although at the same time it might be good because they seem to be really good at dealing with being in the deep end looking after their own research! Anyway I'm planning on getting on top of their current models and getting some really good input too them by week 1 of 2011.
Another interesting development: I'm the acting head of maths from January 4-14. I'm curious to see how much less or more work this is compared with being acting assistant dean. That position can be quite time consuming.
Anyway I guess we'll see how I'm going by e end of the week!
I'm on holidays now for about 15 more days. I'm on recreation leave til Friday and then we have holidays until January 4 because QUT is closed for Christmas. Obviously there will be things going on like Christmas and so on, so I won't be working all the time and I have to take this into account when thinking up any plans or goals, but I'm still hoping to get a fair bit done this week in particular. My current aim is to resubmit the thrice-rejected paper, finish my CTAC paper and another chlamydia modeling paper by the time I return to work. Let's see how that goes!
I'm also planning to get right back on track with the projects of my phd students. Sometimes I feel that they really suffer with me having a dual job (ie my admin-ish job and my academic job)...actually it's more that they suffer because my time is constantly full of meetings. Although at the same time it might be good because they seem to be really good at dealing with being in the deep end looking after their own research! Anyway I'm planning on getting on top of their current models and getting some really good input too them by week 1 of 2011.
Another interesting development: I'm the acting head of maths from January 4-14. I'm curious to see how much less or more work this is compared with being acting assistant dean. That position can be quite time consuming.
Anyway I guess we'll see how I'm going by e end of the week!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Day 57
Thoughts and reflections
Wow, the days are ticking by fast. Tomorrow is my last day of "work" until January 4. Next week I decided to take 5 days off to read books and work on things that I want to work on...and essentially ignore my email. The plan is to put together more concrete plans for my various projects that I'm working on at the moment and get my head together about what I'm doing next year.
I've realised something over I guess the last year really, but it's probably a culmination of the last three years where I have been focussed on the whole Teaching and Learning thing as Director of Studies (and its predecessor job titles). I need lots of things on at once to be able to make progress on anything. When I don't have much going on, I don't get much done. It's almost like I'm too free and can't focus on tasks. When I have a LOT on, I do little bits and pieces, but I get things done. When I'm super-stressed for time, with back to back meetings etc (say filling in for the A/Dean) I get LOTS of things done and can be really productive. Also, I've noticed that I really benefit from outlining my tasks to myself and sorting out how to get through each project - maybe that's obvious to most people, but I never worked that way before and haven't worked with anyone like that either. So for me, it has been enlightening.
Skype!
This morning I had a skype meeting with Dr Dan in Trondheim to restart our Chlamydia research work. It was good to get back onto this and get some plans down on paper. I think it ended up with Dan to be working on some coding for solving our (not yet really written) stochastic DE model.
That's another thing I've learned - my progress/productivity is really dependent on "check-in" meetings like this. I need constant reminders and kick starting to get through things. I can't just do it myself.
I think it's really great that I've been able to realise these things about myself - it seems to me it's important to get to know how you work and to know how you can get things done and why you sometimes don't get things done.
Wow, the days are ticking by fast. Tomorrow is my last day of "work" until January 4. Next week I decided to take 5 days off to read books and work on things that I want to work on...and essentially ignore my email. The plan is to put together more concrete plans for my various projects that I'm working on at the moment and get my head together about what I'm doing next year.
I've realised something over I guess the last year really, but it's probably a culmination of the last three years where I have been focussed on the whole Teaching and Learning thing as Director of Studies (and its predecessor job titles). I need lots of things on at once to be able to make progress on anything. When I don't have much going on, I don't get much done. It's almost like I'm too free and can't focus on tasks. When I have a LOT on, I do little bits and pieces, but I get things done. When I'm super-stressed for time, with back to back meetings etc (say filling in for the A/Dean) I get LOTS of things done and can be really productive. Also, I've noticed that I really benefit from outlining my tasks to myself and sorting out how to get through each project - maybe that's obvious to most people, but I never worked that way before and haven't worked with anyone like that either. So for me, it has been enlightening.
Skype!
This morning I had a skype meeting with Dr Dan in Trondheim to restart our Chlamydia research work. It was good to get back onto this and get some plans down on paper. I think it ended up with Dan to be working on some coding for solving our (not yet really written) stochastic DE model.
That's another thing I've learned - my progress/productivity is really dependent on "check-in" meetings like this. I need constant reminders and kick starting to get through things. I can't just do it myself.
I think it's really great that I've been able to realise these things about myself - it seems to me it's important to get to know how you work and to know how you can get things done and why you sometimes don't get things done.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Day 50-51
This is a little of the topic, but I thought I'd quickly comment on something from The Australian, Higher Education supplement, from Wednesday. Disclaimer: all personal thoughts...does not reflect my institution or my faculty/discipline etc.
Casual numbers blow out
Jill Rowbotham writes about the explosion in the casual workforce in Australian academia, where currently around 60% of academics are employed on casual or sessional terms. The story is related to the doctoral research of Robyn May from Griffith Uni.
There is a statement that "They are stranded in casual positions and there is no career path" and it is essentially this that I would like to discuss. To make such a statement about such a diverse workforce is surely dangerous. For example, from my own experience as both a casual academic and now a full-time academic who is involved in some small way in employing casual staff, I see this as exactly the opposite of my experience. The casual work I completed while studying my PhD was basically part of my training as an academic - there was the research training in the PhD and the teaching training as a casual tutor/lecturer. Now as a full-time academic, we often talk about the sessional staffing positions in that way also. That is, by employing for example current PhD students in these positions, we are taking part in their academic training and assisting them in one day being an excellent applicant for an academic position. I don't think this is a one-off, at least in the area of mathematics...perhaps I am wrong?
Certainly there are uncertainties around future work - but that is the case with any casual job. At least with academia, there is some certainty around the schedule (ie the weeks of the year) and also to some extent how much work will be on offer - student numbers and therefore tutoring work, are roughly steady from year to year, and so too are the available people to staff these tutorials.
Personally, I would hate to see casualisation disappear (not that I have any reason to believe it will) as it would remove what is an excellent training ground for academics and also a real source of supplementary income for what I think would be a greater number of people than would be the case if all the positions were to become full or part time.
Casual numbers blow out
Jill Rowbotham writes about the explosion in the casual workforce in Australian academia, where currently around 60% of academics are employed on casual or sessional terms. The story is related to the doctoral research of Robyn May from Griffith Uni.
There is a statement that "They are stranded in casual positions and there is no career path" and it is essentially this that I would like to discuss. To make such a statement about such a diverse workforce is surely dangerous. For example, from my own experience as both a casual academic and now a full-time academic who is involved in some small way in employing casual staff, I see this as exactly the opposite of my experience. The casual work I completed while studying my PhD was basically part of my training as an academic - there was the research training in the PhD and the teaching training as a casual tutor/lecturer. Now as a full-time academic, we often talk about the sessional staffing positions in that way also. That is, by employing for example current PhD students in these positions, we are taking part in their academic training and assisting them in one day being an excellent applicant for an academic position. I don't think this is a one-off, at least in the area of mathematics...perhaps I am wrong?
Certainly there are uncertainties around future work - but that is the case with any casual job. At least with academia, there is some certainty around the schedule (ie the weeks of the year) and also to some extent how much work will be on offer - student numbers and therefore tutoring work, are roughly steady from year to year, and so too are the available people to staff these tutorials.
Personally, I would hate to see casualisation disappear (not that I have any reason to believe it will) as it would remove what is an excellent training ground for academics and also a real source of supplementary income for what I think would be a greater number of people than would be the case if all the positions were to become full or part time.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Day 47-49
A few downers
Well, the paper about teaching maths to students of non-English speaking backgrounds was rejected...again! No feedback. Just inappropriate. I'm determined to keep trying though. I reckon one more try at a reasonable journal and then I'll go to a fall back position of hitting up the C ranked journals. Hey, at least they are peer-reviewed!
Also, the American Institute of Mathematics workshop application was rejected...so no free trips to the US next year for everyone...sad. I have of course asked for feedback from them, but no response yet.
Uppers
I had a cracker of an idea last night about a way to use my simple mathematical skills and apply them to an area of government policy/action that may be a) actually useful and b) aligns nicely with QUT's strategic directions and advice to "become more active in public policy guidance etc". I'll not share until I actually know it's not a dumb idea! I'm speaking with someone from the relevant area next week, but at first glance (google scholaring) my idea has not been done yet but certainly seems to be useful from my perspective.
Masoum, one of my PhD students, has almost finished her second conference paper. We are just refining it and cutting down to the required number of pages. This one is a CA model of chlamydial infection and interaction with the immune system. It's also the basis for a good chunk of her PhD thesis. We talked about timelines to finish off her project, thesis etc on Monday - so that is exciting...for both of us, since she will be my first HDR completion as principal supervisor.
Well, the paper about teaching maths to students of non-English speaking backgrounds was rejected...again! No feedback. Just inappropriate. I'm determined to keep trying though. I reckon one more try at a reasonable journal and then I'll go to a fall back position of hitting up the C ranked journals. Hey, at least they are peer-reviewed!
Also, the American Institute of Mathematics workshop application was rejected...so no free trips to the US next year for everyone...sad. I have of course asked for feedback from them, but no response yet.
Uppers
I had a cracker of an idea last night about a way to use my simple mathematical skills and apply them to an area of government policy/action that may be a) actually useful and b) aligns nicely with QUT's strategic directions and advice to "become more active in public policy guidance etc". I'll not share until I actually know it's not a dumb idea! I'm speaking with someone from the relevant area next week, but at first glance (google scholaring) my idea has not been done yet but certainly seems to be useful from my perspective.
Masoum, one of my PhD students, has almost finished her second conference paper. We are just refining it and cutting down to the required number of pages. This one is a CA model of chlamydial infection and interaction with the immune system. It's also the basis for a good chunk of her PhD thesis. We talked about timelines to finish off her project, thesis etc on Monday - so that is exciting...for both of us, since she will be my first HDR completion as principal supervisor.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Day 42-46 CTAC wrap up
It took me a while to get back to writing this...so my memory may be hazy.
I didn't enjoy CTAC as much as I could have, but mainly due to the weather. Sydney was cold and rainy...not fun. The conference itself was not bad though, especially since I'm no computational mathematician, so it is kind of out of my interest zone. If anything, my interest would be tied to computational linear algebra, but there wasn't much on offer. It was quite heavily focussed on computational fluid dynamics. Although, there is a rumour that it will be better next time because we are most likely hosting CTAC in Brisbane in 2012.
Talks of interest
Some good talks that I saw included Qianqian Yang's - numerics for fractional diffusion equations. I think I've basically seen it before, but I think it's cool stuff, so it was good to watch again. Eventually I will understand that stuff. I didn't get to see Tim Moroney, Michael Dallaston or Julian Back though. My student Masoum did pretty well. Unfortunately she had to follow me and I already explained chlamydial infection in my talk, which took away from her description I think. However she did well in that her description was more detailed than mine and also more specific to her problem, so I was very pleased with it. She also showed that she knows what she is talking about, both in the biology and in the simulation area.
My own talk went pretty well considering I wrote the entire thing about 12 hours (most sleeping hours) prior to delivering it. I went with the "I'm a research group leader and don't actually do any work, so here's an overview of the problem before my student actually tells you something" method. It seemed to go ok. I think it was good for me too to actually get back into thinking about the basics of the problem.
Chairing
I chaired one of the three (simultaneous) final contributed talk sessions, featuring Fawang Liu, Mike Hsieh and a Professor Watanabe from Japan. It turns out that people who you expect to be troublesome and go over time, aren't/don't always! So that was good. We were basically on time. Not many questions though for the speakers, except Mike who got a couple.
Venue
I have been to UNSW before, so I knew what to expect. It's an interesting campus in that it is a hybrid between a technical institute and a Go8 university. The hybridisation being over time rather than a current one.
It's nice to walk around and see these ugly old concrete blocks or really ugly brick buildings with the concrete crumbling away at the edges to reveal the steal formwork beneath, and then right next to it, see a beautiful (faux?) sandstone building or modern architecturally designed building full of glass and weird angles. Plus, knowing that it used to be NSWUT and is now one of the top 5 unis in the country on pretty much any measure you can find makes me wonder where QUT will be 60 years into its life... Oh, and they had blackboards in the main lecture room! Vive la chalkdust!
Lodgings
I stayed at the Parade Lodge, just down ANZAC Parade about two blocks away from the main entrance to UNSW. In reality, it wasn't that bad. There was plenty of room, private bathroom, a fridge, a window and relative peace and quiet. It was by no means fancy, it was very simple like a big dorm room I guess (not that I've really been in one of them), reasonably clean...but: the internet was super shoddy AND I had to pay for it. I hate that in Australia, internet is not free in hotels/lodges. Horrible. Fortunately I had my tetherable phone and 1G of available data - which I more or less used up.
Food and Culture
Was great, if only because I found a Colombian restaurant staffed by actual Colombians!!! I had a huge feast of empanadas and very spicy salsa, then a big plate of Bandeja Paisa (see picture) with a lulo juice. Great first day. On the Sunday I took the day off essentially and went into Sydney to see the Annie Liebovitz exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It's not really my thing, but she does interest me a little (although Susan Sontag is much more interesting to me...but they have an obvious connection) plus Charisse went when she was in Sydney, so I went for a look. I didn't really like the portrait shots, but the real action photos of her and Susan I found really interesting and enjoyed those.
Sunday also featured a solo meal at the Lowenbrau cafe at the Rocks - yummy preserved meats and veges with bread a litre of beer. Yum. And also dinner with A/Prof Wilson and Mrs Wilson at Surry Hills - tasty pizza at Pizza e Birra. Also yum. On the way to the Wilson's I took refuge in a corner pub while it rained - I love these little pubs they have in Surry Hills (and I'm sure, other places that I haven't been to). They are just like a lounge room that happens to have a bar behind it. I managed to come in just as three Aussies gave some poor pom a hard time for supporting a soccer team that wasn't his home town team, but a more successful side. Very amusing. Although, we were copping it on the tv screen in the test cricket at the time, so the pom was ok with it.
The conference dinner was good but nothing amazing. Italian food - not bad...poor beer selection. Afterwards, the boss tried to convince us to walk to the SCG (about 3km away) to do a nudey run...but some party pooper (cough-Elliot) made us turn around. So we just had some beers at the Doncaster.
-----
I didn't enjoy CTAC as much as I could have, but mainly due to the weather. Sydney was cold and rainy...not fun. The conference itself was not bad though, especially since I'm no computational mathematician, so it is kind of out of my interest zone. If anything, my interest would be tied to computational linear algebra, but there wasn't much on offer. It was quite heavily focussed on computational fluid dynamics. Although, there is a rumour that it will be better next time because we are most likely hosting CTAC in Brisbane in 2012.Talks of interest
Some good talks that I saw included Qianqian Yang's - numerics for fractional diffusion equations. I think I've basically seen it before, but I think it's cool stuff, so it was good to watch again. Eventually I will understand that stuff. I didn't get to see Tim Moroney, Michael Dallaston or Julian Back though. My student Masoum did pretty well. Unfortunately she had to follow me and I already explained chlamydial infection in my talk, which took away from her description I think. However she did well in that her description was more detailed than mine and also more specific to her problem, so I was very pleased with it. She also showed that she knows what she is talking about, both in the biology and in the simulation area.
My own talk went pretty well considering I wrote the entire thing about 12 hours (most sleeping hours) prior to delivering it. I went with the "I'm a research group leader and don't actually do any work, so here's an overview of the problem before my student actually tells you something" method. It seemed to go ok. I think it was good for me too to actually get back into thinking about the basics of the problem.
Chairing
I chaired one of the three (simultaneous) final contributed talk sessions, featuring Fawang Liu, Mike Hsieh and a Professor Watanabe from Japan. It turns out that people who you expect to be troublesome and go over time, aren't/don't always! So that was good. We were basically on time. Not many questions though for the speakers, except Mike who got a couple.
Venue
I have been to UNSW before, so I knew what to expect. It's an interesting campus in that it is a hybrid between a technical institute and a Go8 university. The hybridisation being over time rather than a current one.
It's nice to walk around and see these ugly old concrete blocks or really ugly brick buildings with the concrete crumbling away at the edges to reveal the steal formwork beneath, and then right next to it, see a beautiful (faux?) sandstone building or modern architecturally designed building full of glass and weird angles. Plus, knowing that it used to be NSWUT and is now one of the top 5 unis in the country on pretty much any measure you can find makes me wonder where QUT will be 60 years into its life... Oh, and they had blackboards in the main lecture room! Vive la chalkdust!
Lodgings
I stayed at the Parade Lodge, just down ANZAC Parade about two blocks away from the main entrance to UNSW. In reality, it wasn't that bad. There was plenty of room, private bathroom, a fridge, a window and relative peace and quiet. It was by no means fancy, it was very simple like a big dorm room I guess (not that I've really been in one of them), reasonably clean...but: the internet was super shoddy AND I had to pay for it. I hate that in Australia, internet is not free in hotels/lodges. Horrible. Fortunately I had my tetherable phone and 1G of available data - which I more or less used up.Food and Culture
Was great, if only because I found a Colombian restaurant staffed by actual Colombians!!! I had a huge feast of empanadas and very spicy salsa, then a big plate of Bandeja Paisa (see picture) with a lulo juice. Great first day. On the Sunday I took the day off essentially and went into Sydney to see the Annie Liebovitz exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It's not really my thing, but she does interest me a little (although Susan Sontag is much more interesting to me...but they have an obvious connection) plus Charisse went when she was in Sydney, so I went for a look. I didn't really like the portrait shots, but the real action photos of her and Susan I found really interesting and enjoyed those.
Sunday also featured a solo meal at the Lowenbrau cafe at the Rocks - yummy preserved meats and veges with bread a litre of beer. Yum. And also dinner with A/Prof Wilson and Mrs Wilson at Surry Hills - tasty pizza at Pizza e Birra. Also yum. On the way to the Wilson's I took refuge in a corner pub while it rained - I love these little pubs they have in Surry Hills (and I'm sure, other places that I haven't been to). They are just like a lounge room that happens to have a bar behind it. I managed to come in just as three Aussies gave some poor pom a hard time for supporting a soccer team that wasn't his home town team, but a more successful side. Very amusing. Although, we were copping it on the tv screen in the test cricket at the time, so the pom was ok with it.
The conference dinner was good but nothing amazing. Italian food - not bad...poor beer selection. Afterwards, the boss tried to convince us to walk to the SCG (about 3km away) to do a nudey run...but some party pooper (cough-Elliot) made us turn around. So we just had some beers at the Doncaster.-----
I guess not much else of interest happened. That will do!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Day 41 (and previous days too)
Last week I had another of my education conference abstracts accepted. This time for the Global Learn Conference in Melbourne in March. This one is about developing a classification for types of criterion referenced assessment in university level mathematics. I probably don't really fit in at the conference, which is quite general rather than discipline specific...but they accepted the abstract, so fine!
Soooo...I'm in Sydney at the 15th CTAC conference. I'm talking tomorrow at about 11am I think. I just wrote my talk this evening and you can take a sneak peak (those of you who are here in Sydney) or just a look (those of you who don't get the chance to be here). Should be interesting - I decided to go with a "I'll do the expert overview" type talk, since Masoum (my PhD student) is talking straight after me. So it's quite generic with a bit of chat about the problems related to Chlamydia, multiscaledness etc. No real maths as usual...I'll work on that for my next talk on this sort of stuff, where I will put at least one equation in :-)
I started working on my conference proceedings paper too. It's interesting to do that after writing the talk I think. I'm finding it quite a nice way to go about starting a draft to a paper - I'll have to keep an eye on whether that is really a good idea or not. I'm interested to hear what other people's thoughts are too.
Soooo...I'm in Sydney at the 15th CTAC conference. I'm talking tomorrow at about 11am I think. I just wrote my talk this evening and you can take a sneak peak (those of you who are here in Sydney) or just a look (those of you who don't get the chance to be here). Should be interesting - I decided to go with a "I'll do the expert overview" type talk, since Masoum (my PhD student) is talking straight after me. So it's quite generic with a bit of chat about the problems related to Chlamydia, multiscaledness etc. No real maths as usual...I'll work on that for my next talk on this sort of stuff, where I will put at least one equation in :-)
I started working on my conference proceedings paper too. It's interesting to do that after writing the talk I think. I'm finding it quite a nice way to go about starting a draft to a paper - I'll have to keep an eye on whether that is really a good idea or not. I'm interested to hear what other people's thoughts are too.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Day 35 - Good news!
So apart from a totally shitey day due to having to attend the examiners' meeting and listen to blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, today was quite a good one. Two reasons: 1. My PhD student Masoum found out that her paper that she presented at the recent International Conference on Computational Biology won Best Student Paper! 2. My submission (with Jen Flegg) for the 14th Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education Conference next February was accepted - three reviews came back with one quite favourable and the other two just over the line. Lots of work needed on the paper itself.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Day 34 - First paper submitted!
It's Day 34 and today I submitted my first paper of the non teaching period! It's called "Non-native English speakers' difficulties in English language mathematics classrooms" and I've submitted it to Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. This is the paper that's been rejected previously, I think, because I poorly thought out my choice of journals to aim at. Here's hoping this is a better choice.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Day 27-31
So I'm about a month in. What's happened so far...? I guess nothing concrete. Lots of progress on lots of different things, but no definite outputs at this stage.
I've *almost* got one paper ready to submit - I've been working on that a bit this week. It started when I went to Colombia last year and on the way, sat in on a statistical modelling class at Universidad Adolfo Ibañez in Chile. The class was taught in Spanish and what I noticed was that I could understand what was going on when the Prof was doing a structured part of the class, but I had trouble when they went into a bit of freestyle Q&A among the class. This got me thinking about how my own non-English speaking background students cope in my classes - especially given that I am a pretty informal person (lots of messing around, colloquial language etc). The paper is about that experience and realisations that it provided me and ideas for coping with classes of different backgrounds in better ways (eg making sure you constantly tag your notes/chalkwork with references to the text or your prewritten notes etc so students can follow).
It has been rejected from 2 journals already, but I think that is mostly because I didn't think about where I was sending it. That's an important lesson in itself that hasn't really effected me previously.
I did a bit of work on a paper that Masoum (my PhD student) is working on. It's about effects of chemokines like interferon-gamma in the chlamydial infection process. It's PDE based and we worked a little on refining the model itself, as well as putting some thought into the type of literature that we wanted to refer to in our intro. Going well I think.
I've also been continuing my literature search to back up a paper I'm working on related to a nifty little assessment strategy that Tim Moroney uses in comp maths. It's basically the 'design by contract' concept from IT applied to computational mathematics. It's difficult to find any literature out there, so that's definitely good from the perspective of this being something novel at least in the mathematical context.
Off the research topic for a moment, I am actually more finished teaching now since I completed my marking and grade uploads yesterday - that feels good. Especially since there was a lot that I didn't do!!! :D
Also, on Wednesday I was one of two after-lunch speakers at the University's promotion luncheon (where all the new profs and a/profs get dined by the VC and chancellor and co). That went extremely well. For about the first time since grade 12 English assignments, I actually prepared my talk - so I was nervous as hell! I very rarely get nervous at all if I just talk. I talked about my upbringing and how I got to where I am and so on, and then about what promotion means to me. But it went really really well. People actually clapped and seemed to mean it (instead of just out of habit) and lots of people came up to me and talked about my story etc.
Today I'm home with the boy while Charisse is doing her annual report for her Masters degree at UNSW. Tonight the honours students are coming over to drink away the pain of their talks this afternoon! :-)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Day 24
So what does one do when one no longer has access to data from experimentalists? Use their published data from papers and GraphClick. Very nifty.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Day 23
Today I actually did some stuff!
First, I did a read through and edits of a paper Jen Flegg has been writing that is all about engineering students' perceptions of the usefulness of their maths units to both their later studies and to their careers (as well as some other matters too). It's quite interesting to see that many of them seem to trust that it is relevant, but don't actually see it themselves. Our conclusion, or probably more of a suggestion for improvement of the situation, is that this implies more collaboration is required between mathematicians and engineering academics in the design of these service mathematics units.
Jen is doing the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (you basically get a scholarship to do it if you are a new staff member at QUT) and each of the units I think allows/requires you to undertake an action research project like this. It's really great I think. So many positives: improving teaching, improving learning, increasing publications, opening up new research areas.
After lunch, Tim and Graeme and I had a beer-meeting (over a bottle of chimay). We had a chat about extending some of my hybrid CA-PDE models to the third dimension. Tim is providing some really useful input since he knows things about solving reaction diffusion equations in three dimensions quite quickly using fancy intel libraries or something or other. Sounds great. We also talked about some work on arteries and lipid deposits and such - this seems to be a problem Peter Johnston from Griffith is working on (Peter may also be known as "father of 2010 Maths Dean's scholar Stuart")...I'm not too clear on this yet, but it seems like at the early stages, blood flow can be ignored and we simply look at the movement of the lipids through the artery wall using a porous media style model.
We've been without internet here at home for 3 days now - it's like the dark ages. Oh, except for the fact that I can tether my android and use that (thank god).
First, I did a read through and edits of a paper Jen Flegg has been writing that is all about engineering students' perceptions of the usefulness of their maths units to both their later studies and to their careers (as well as some other matters too). It's quite interesting to see that many of them seem to trust that it is relevant, but don't actually see it themselves. Our conclusion, or probably more of a suggestion for improvement of the situation, is that this implies more collaboration is required between mathematicians and engineering academics in the design of these service mathematics units.
Jen is doing the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (you basically get a scholarship to do it if you are a new staff member at QUT) and each of the units I think allows/requires you to undertake an action research project like this. It's really great I think. So many positives: improving teaching, improving learning, increasing publications, opening up new research areas.
After lunch, Tim and Graeme and I had a beer-meeting (over a bottle of chimay). We had a chat about extending some of my hybrid CA-PDE models to the third dimension. Tim is providing some really useful input since he knows things about solving reaction diffusion equations in three dimensions quite quickly using fancy intel libraries or something or other. Sounds great. We also talked about some work on arteries and lipid deposits and such - this seems to be a problem Peter Johnston from Griffith is working on (Peter may also be known as "father of 2010 Maths Dean's scholar Stuart")...I'm not too clear on this yet, but it seems like at the early stages, blood flow can be ignored and we simply look at the movement of the lipids through the artery wall using a porous media style model.
We've been without internet here at home for 3 days now - it's like the dark ages. Oh, except for the fact that I can tether my android and use that (thank god).
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Day 22
Today we had the ALTC Science Discipline scholars visiting from UTasmania. These folk, Brian Yates and Sue Jones, are the leaders of the Science part of the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Project run by the ALTC.
The Australian Government has awarded the ALTC $2 million to facilitate and coordinate discipline communities’ definition of academic standards as the higher education sector prepares for a new regulatory environment and the creation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
(from http://www.altc.edu.au/standards)
They discussed their project and threshold learning outcomes with a small group of interested folk this morning and then again this afternoon, in more depth, with the design team of QUT's proposed Bachelor of Science degree. It was quite interesting to hear the learning outcomes that they have drafted together so far, that are intended to cover the pass-level outcomes for a graduate of a science degree from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, mathematics etc...quite broad, so somewhat generic but at the same time "sciency".
I also managed to finally do some work on the summaries from some curriculum renewal workshops that we held. These were workshops with academic staff from around the faculty where we discussed ideas like revitalising practical activities in our courses, streaming students at different learning stages or with different learning intentions (eg international experience vs research preparation, etc), and the concept of an inverted curriculum. These all form part of our plans to put in a swag of ALTC grant applications next year (or possibly one large consolidated one).
The Australian Government has awarded the ALTC $2 million to facilitate and coordinate discipline communities’ definition of academic standards as the higher education sector prepares for a new regulatory environment and the creation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
(from http://www.altc.edu.au/standards)
They discussed their project and threshold learning outcomes with a small group of interested folk this morning and then again this afternoon, in more depth, with the design team of QUT's proposed Bachelor of Science degree. It was quite interesting to hear the learning outcomes that they have drafted together so far, that are intended to cover the pass-level outcomes for a graduate of a science degree from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth sciences, mathematics etc...quite broad, so somewhat generic but at the same time "sciency".
I also managed to finally do some work on the summaries from some curriculum renewal workshops that we held. These were workshops with academic staff from around the faculty where we discussed ideas like revitalising practical activities in our courses, streaming students at different learning stages or with different learning intentions (eg international experience vs research preparation, etc), and the concept of an inverted curriculum. These all form part of our plans to put in a swag of ALTC grant applications next year (or possibly one large consolidated one).
Day 21 (Tuesday)
Chazzle and I went down to Folio Books on Albert to have a squizzy. They have some good books, but I'm a tight arse, so I'm not paying $30 for paperbacks when I can get them for $10-15 on bookdepository or amazon. Nonetheless interesting.
Then we went next door to Zarraffas, the actual purpose of the post lunch trip, to work on her Bayesian network for passenger wayfinding at the airport. This was really fun - I've never done something like that before. Basically, from my perspective, it was all about thinking what influences the quality of wayfinding at an airport...things like human system and airport system, what they are composed of (eg signs, iconography, pathways, spatial design, language, speaker systems for announcements etc). It was quite interesting putting it all together. More on this in Day 22.
I also looked at an invitation to contribute to a special issue of a newish journal called "Cancers". It's an issue on tumour immune system interactions (which I have done a little modelling of). It's not really the kind of journal that I can publish in - it's quite focussed on experimental work. But I have written to the guest editor asking if they might be interested in a short paper of a few pages, discussing the methods I use (hybrid cellular automata essentially) and how they can be employed as a pre-experimental stage to refine hypotheses etc and hopefully save some money on experiments. Haven't heard back yet...but hopefully they will be interested - it's always good to get the word out to the experimental community.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Day 18 (Saturday)
Nothing to report for Saturday really. Unless you count Scott's wedding. Twas good - held in West End...in fact, we realised that his house, his Buck's party pub crawl and his wedding venue were all within about 3 blocks of each other.
Warning - social commentary: It was sad to hear the official words that the celebrant speaks that include defining for us all that marriage is "between a man and a woman". Besides being just plain wrong, it was just so out of place at what was otherwise a great progressive sort of wedding. The Bertrand Russell reading by Angela's mum kind of balanced things back to rationality though, so that was good.Good luck Scotty and Angela! Don't forget you still have 9 papers left in the dozen before you get your Leffe and only a couple of months to go!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Day 17 (Friday)
I've been doing a fair bit of literature review work the last couple of days, mostly for some educational research papers I'm writing up. It's kind of interesting that completely by accident I decided to try out some collaborative small-group work stuff in my units this semester, when it is just about to become a focus (well sort of) within science and tech as well as the engineering faculty at QUT.
We are building this huge new science and technology precinct which is supposed to feature some so-called new age teaching and learning spaces (think new GP library, new S block levels, new O303a). Lot's of collaborative workspace, flexible room setups and (re)movable furniture. etc. When I saw the new level 4 S block lecture room with the glass walls, I wasn't impressed...in fact, I'm still not. It actually isn't any different so far as I can tell, besides the glass walls, from what it was when I was an undergrad 12 years ago. The furniture may even be identical.
But that's not the point... the point is I finally thought a little bit about what else I could do in their besides standing up and talking to people doing examples. The room in question has those large two-student flat desks that you can move around just like any old table. So I thought, bugger it, I'm going to get people to talk with each other and work on problems on purpose (rather than because that's what they decide to do). Another fortuitous (or not) thing was the closure of the students work room in O block. There wasn't really as easy an opportunity any more for students to just sit around and work on their maths with each other. In a sense, I tried to mimic that atmosphere, probably not very successfully, in my collaborative classroom activities.
Personally, I think we over lecture. 3 hours a week isn't really necessary. That doesn't mean I don't want to spend the 3 hrs teaching or in the classroom, but just that I don't think I need to be talking up the front all the time. I think in many cases, a 1 hour overview is more appropriate and then the remaining 3 hours could be spent in structured, small-group learning activities. What do I mean by structured? Well, not just a sheet of questions... more like worksheets that guide the students through constructing the ideas for themselves. You can't go too far off track because the guiding worksheet always brings you back to the path, but at the same time you would need to draw on your prior knowledge to figure out where to go and what to do.
This is also, in a sense, what I tried out with my collaborative activities. A couple of them were actually used as the introduction to a topic. THat is, I didn't teach the topic first, I got students to work on a structured, small-group worksheet. That probably seems weird and unfair...but it's actually quite good I think. It allows each student to build their own concepts and to arrive at a place in the progression of learning about something before I come in and sterilise their viewpoint with that of the so-called expert. I think it is even empowering to some people when they realise they can learn by themselves and that anything I provide is just reinforcement or guidance.
We are building this huge new science and technology precinct which is supposed to feature some so-called new age teaching and learning spaces (think new GP library, new S block levels, new O303a). Lot's of collaborative workspace, flexible room setups and (re)movable furniture. etc. When I saw the new level 4 S block lecture room with the glass walls, I wasn't impressed...in fact, I'm still not. It actually isn't any different so far as I can tell, besides the glass walls, from what it was when I was an undergrad 12 years ago. The furniture may even be identical.
But that's not the point... the point is I finally thought a little bit about what else I could do in their besides standing up and talking to people doing examples. The room in question has those large two-student flat desks that you can move around just like any old table. So I thought, bugger it, I'm going to get people to talk with each other and work on problems on purpose (rather than because that's what they decide to do). Another fortuitous (or not) thing was the closure of the students work room in O block. There wasn't really as easy an opportunity any more for students to just sit around and work on their maths with each other. In a sense, I tried to mimic that atmosphere, probably not very successfully, in my collaborative classroom activities.
Personally, I think we over lecture. 3 hours a week isn't really necessary. That doesn't mean I don't want to spend the 3 hrs teaching or in the classroom, but just that I don't think I need to be talking up the front all the time. I think in many cases, a 1 hour overview is more appropriate and then the remaining 3 hours could be spent in structured, small-group learning activities. What do I mean by structured? Well, not just a sheet of questions... more like worksheets that guide the students through constructing the ideas for themselves. You can't go too far off track because the guiding worksheet always brings you back to the path, but at the same time you would need to draw on your prior knowledge to figure out where to go and what to do.
This is also, in a sense, what I tried out with my collaborative activities. A couple of them were actually used as the introduction to a topic. THat is, I didn't teach the topic first, I got students to work on a structured, small-group worksheet. That probably seems weird and unfair...but it's actually quite good I think. It allows each student to build their own concepts and to arrive at a place in the progression of learning about something before I come in and sterilise their viewpoint with that of the so-called expert. I think it is even empowering to some people when they realise they can learn by themselves and that anything I provide is just reinforcement or guidance.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Day 16
Day 16 Part 2
QUT Beamer template [zip download]
So as promised, here is the first version of the QUT beamer template I put together with the help of my wonderful wife. Updates are sure to follow as it is pretty skeletal. Let me know if there's anything you suggest...I'll get around to it eventually.
QUT Beamer template [zip download]
So as promised, here is the first version of the QUT beamer template I put together with the help of my wonderful wife. Updates are sure to follow as it is pretty skeletal. Let me know if there's anything you suggest...I'll get around to it eventually.
Day 16 - AIM proposal
So, many years ago (ok 5) I went to a research workshop at a place called the american institute of mathematics (http://www.aimath.org). The workshop was on modelling cancer immunology and stuff like that and was organized by prof lisette de pillis (I did my postdoc with her math @ hmc) and some other folk (amy radunskaya and chuck wiseman). There were about 30 people from math and cancer immunology, oncology etc who all came together to work on problems in cancer treatment using mathematics. It was great fun. If you've ever been to maths in industry study group or maths in medicine study group, it was kind of like that.
I got an email from aim a few weeks back looking for proposals for workshops for next year. So I've quickly whipped one up with the help of graeme and scott and sent it off today. It's on modeling skin and related conditions. If it gets up there is a free trip to California in it for us and everyone else involved!
I got an email from aim a few weeks back looking for proposals for workshops for next year. So I've quickly whipped one up with the help of graeme and scott and sent it off today. It's on modeling skin and related conditions. If it gets up there is a free trip to California in it for us and everyone else involved!
Day 15
Bayesian beginnings
With Charisse doing a phd which involves modeling with Bayesian networks, I'm starting to read up on this sort of thing myself (so that we can still talk to each other). I've been skimming her books and also getting a few myself from the kindle store (I seem to be able to get around to reading things if they are on my iPad). The idea seems quite simple so that is good for someone like me - I don't really get statistical type modeling really. But it seems to be all about directed graphs where the connections represent the existence of some sort of probabilistic relationships between the nodes being connected.
For example, say I have A and B where A can take on values 'good upbringing' or 'bad upbringing' and B can have values 'future male stripper' and 'future chief justice' then we might have a graph of the form
A --> B
Then perhaps have probabilities like
P(B=fcj | A=gu)
P(B=fcj | A=bu)
P(B=fms | A=gu)
P(B=fms | A=bu)
And these could be calculated as an output (think bayes theorem) given certain input data like probability of good upbringing etc.
Well that's my very early limited understanding of the idea. I'm sure you folk reading this can clear me up.
Students
So this all got me thinking when someone publishes a paper in this type of stuff, what do they write about in terms of results? For example when I write a paper with say PDEs for some biological application I present graphical output for example of spatial or temporal or both, solutions. Or I present an analytical result that might uncover a key parameter relationship. So what is the equivalent for w Bayesian network paper?
Then i got to thinking about students and research training. Perhaps sometimes, because of our (researchers) familiarity with what we are doing, we forget that the actual idea behind writing a paper and presenting results is not so intuitive for everyone. I think that's something I will definitely be keeping in mind in the future with my student supervision.
With Charisse doing a phd which involves modeling with Bayesian networks, I'm starting to read up on this sort of thing myself (so that we can still talk to each other). I've been skimming her books and also getting a few myself from the kindle store (I seem to be able to get around to reading things if they are on my iPad). The idea seems quite simple so that is good for someone like me - I don't really get statistical type modeling really. But it seems to be all about directed graphs where the connections represent the existence of some sort of probabilistic relationships between the nodes being connected.
For example, say I have A and B where A can take on values 'good upbringing' or 'bad upbringing' and B can have values 'future male stripper' and 'future chief justice' then we might have a graph of the form
A --> B
Then perhaps have probabilities like
P(B=fcj | A=gu)
P(B=fcj | A=bu)
P(B=fms | A=gu)
P(B=fms | A=bu)
And these could be calculated as an output (think bayes theorem) given certain input data like probability of good upbringing etc.
Well that's my very early limited understanding of the idea. I'm sure you folk reading this can clear me up.
Students
So this all got me thinking when someone publishes a paper in this type of stuff, what do they write about in terms of results? For example when I write a paper with say PDEs for some biological application I present graphical output for example of spatial or temporal or both, solutions. Or I present an analytical result that might uncover a key parameter relationship. So what is the equivalent for w Bayesian network paper?
Then i got to thinking about students and research training. Perhaps sometimes, because of our (researchers) familiarity with what we are doing, we forget that the actual idea behind writing a paper and presenting results is not so intuitive for everyone. I think that's something I will definitely be keeping in mind in the future with my student supervision.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Day 14 - fuzzy
I'm half way through a paper on fuzzy decision making for locating goods distribution centres...I thought it would be interesting, but to be honest, I'm kind of bored. It's called "A multi-criteria decision making approach for location planning for urban distribution centers under uncertainty" by Awasthi et al [see here] in the latest Mathematical and Computer modelling. I'll stick it out and read the example and see if that makes it any better.
I think I have an unhealthy obsession with fuzzy logic and associated things. I'm pretty sure it has a place in formalising the way I apply rules in my CA models, but I haven't put much thought into that yet.
Note to self: put thought into that.
I think I have an unhealthy obsession with fuzzy logic and associated things. I'm pretty sure it has a place in formalising the way I apply rules in my CA models, but I haven't put much thought into that yet.
Note to self: put thought into that.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Day 13
Today I mostly did teaching related stuff due to the fact that my DEs class had their exam this morning and the PDEs class has theirs on wednesday. So lots of students visiting to ask questions. Plus I had to write the exam and solutions!
This evening though I read a paper I downloaded from a recent issue of Mathematical and Computer Modelling. Patanarapeelert et al reported on as study they carried out where they took the data generated by CA models of tumor growth ( like the ones I do ) and applied some technique to it to determine the coefficient functions for a stochastic de model of the form
dX_t = h dt + g dW.
Thereby allowing for a macroscopic model to be derived from a microscopic model.
I think I get the majority of it, but it's not all clear for me unfortunately. Plus the language was a bit scrappy but that's ok.
The problem is I'm not exactly sure I get the point of what they did. They very briefly skim over what I consider to be the most important bit in the last sentence or so. That being that they could use microscopic understanding to build a CA model, generate in silica data, build the macroscopic model and then use it to make recommendations or conclusions at the macroscopic level (eg x will happen to the tumor due to y being applied to the immune system).
Anyway I think i will ask dr Simpson if it's worth looking into it any further... Or if we (he) can do something better to the same end.
This evening though I read a paper I downloaded from a recent issue of Mathematical and Computer Modelling. Patanarapeelert et al reported on as study they carried out where they took the data generated by CA models of tumor growth ( like the ones I do ) and applied some technique to it to determine the coefficient functions for a stochastic de model of the form
dX_t = h dt + g dW.
Thereby allowing for a macroscopic model to be derived from a microscopic model.
I think I get the majority of it, but it's not all clear for me unfortunately. Plus the language was a bit scrappy but that's ok.
The problem is I'm not exactly sure I get the point of what they did. They very briefly skim over what I consider to be the most important bit in the last sentence or so. That being that they could use microscopic understanding to build a CA model, generate in silica data, build the macroscopic model and then use it to make recommendations or conclusions at the macroscopic level (eg x will happen to the tumor due to y being applied to the immune system).
Anyway I think i will ask dr Simpson if it's worth looking into it any further... Or if we (he) can do something better to the same end.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Day 11
This morning I read the Kindle free chapter of "Complexity Explained" by Peter Erdi. This was pretty interesting. It's kind of an easy to read, not-overly-mathematical, intro to the concept of complex systems. I think it's one of those Springer "not quite a full on book yet, but on the way" manuscripts, as there are a fair few grammatical issues in the text. But all in all, quite readable - I may add it to my Christmas list. It's $55 for kindle version or $64 for the softcover. Strangely - it's more on bookdepository... :(
This got me thinking about the Applied Mathematical Modelling honours unit that (at this stage) I am teaching next year, semester 2. I'm thinking that we might (the class and I) do a bit of reading around the uses of mathematics in reality (such as in complex systems etc) with some very new books in the area...I'll probably end up buying them myself or getting the library to get them in. Perhaps even do some book review writing (like the reviews that appear in journals). I'm also thinking of getting some invited speakers in to talk about their view on what Applied Mathematics means.
I'm also working with Professor John Frazer on starting a seminar series on "Complexity"...tentatively our first seminar will be on Dec 3 (location to be determined) in the afternoon, featuring Professor Simon Kaplan and followed by discussions among the group. This should be really interesting too - I've not seen Simon speak about academic research things before but understand he is great to listen to. John Frazer is quite cool (academically I mean :P ) I think. He's a Professor of Design Science and a pioneer of the use of computer technologies in architecture and design. He has lead some truly awesome research (inlcuding that described in the book at An Evolutionary Architecture) and has recently been working on using cellular automata-like programs to design/grow buildings. Cool.
This got me thinking about the Applied Mathematical Modelling honours unit that (at this stage) I am teaching next year, semester 2. I'm thinking that we might (the class and I) do a bit of reading around the uses of mathematics in reality (such as in complex systems etc) with some very new books in the area...I'll probably end up buying them myself or getting the library to get them in. Perhaps even do some book review writing (like the reviews that appear in journals). I'm also thinking of getting some invited speakers in to talk about their view on what Applied Mathematics means.
I'm also working with Professor John Frazer on starting a seminar series on "Complexity"...tentatively our first seminar will be on Dec 3 (location to be determined) in the afternoon, featuring Professor Simon Kaplan and followed by discussions among the group. This should be really interesting too - I've not seen Simon speak about academic research things before but understand he is great to listen to. John Frazer is quite cool (academically I mean :P ) I think. He's a Professor of Design Science and a pioneer of the use of computer technologies in architecture and design. He has lead some truly awesome research (inlcuding that described in the book at An Evolutionary Architecture) and has recently been working on using cellular automata-like programs to design/grow buildings. Cool.
Day 10
Day 10 was boring - Faculty Teaching and Learning committee meeting, then finishing up solutions for practice exams...this was a "nonresearchday".
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Day 9
Went to two research related events today. The first was a workshop/info session about ALTC grants over at Kelvin Grove Campus. I got some interesting ideas about selecting good collaborators which I think will strengthen our FaST applications in the upcoming rounds.
This afternoon I went to the first "TEMPO" meeting. TEMPO is a group headed by Chris Langton from Physics and John Frazer from BEE which is basically a group/club where people who work in modelling, simulating, describing etc spatially and/or temporally varying stuff. This was great - some really exciting researchers there from all over the place: BEE, FaST, CI...very interesting. John Frazer uses CA and genetic algorithms to essentially design buildings from what I understand. There were other folk there from Airports of the Future project (where Charisse is doing her PhD) too.
John and I will be starting a Complex Systems seminar and discussion series soon (around December). I think Simon Kaplan (Exec Dean - FaST) is to be the first speaker...to be confirmed. Stay tuned if you are interested.
This afternoon I went to the first "TEMPO" meeting. TEMPO is a group headed by Chris Langton from Physics and John Frazer from BEE which is basically a group/club where people who work in modelling, simulating, describing etc spatially and/or temporally varying stuff. This was great - some really exciting researchers there from all over the place: BEE, FaST, CI...very interesting. John Frazer uses CA and genetic algorithms to essentially design buildings from what I understand. There were other folk there from Airports of the Future project (where Charisse is doing her PhD) too.
John and I will be starting a Complex Systems seminar and discussion series soon (around December). I think Simon Kaplan (Exec Dean - FaST) is to be the first speaker...to be confirmed. Stay tuned if you are interested.
Day 8 (late again)
Had a meeting with the unsuccessful ARC grant group (Kunle and YT). All agreed on going ahead for a retry in the next round. We think that the downfall of the application was that we didn't get across our philosophy of how we would move from biology/mechanical concepts to the mathematical/computational model...basically, the CA rules I think. It's important to take a step back and see what is obvious for you, but not for others.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Day 7
Well, not much happened today - just a lot of practice exam writing for my DEs and PDEs classes and some curriculum renewal project work. I did have some brief discussions with Graeme and Scott about a proposal for an American Institute of Mathematics workshop next year - that sounds promising.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Day 6 update
And of course, to make a bad day worse we have a classic Willahra Tower fire alarm. Thanks a lot jerks - we all think that man managed to understand fire to some basic level during the earliest periods of our existence...but alas, not the morons who live in this building.
But the firewoman gave little Dan a keyring and stickers and a balloon - he loved it.
But the firewoman gave little Dan a keyring and stickers and a balloon - he loved it.
Day 6
A bad day - I've felt like absolute trash since last night actually...which is not good for getting things done on a day that you are fortuitous enough to have blocked out in your diary for a research day. So another day worth of email has piled up and I'm still somewhat ill. Also, ARC Discovery Project outcomes were released today - the application I was on with Kunle Oloyede (from Engineering) and a few others was unsuccessful :-( Then I realised that the submission due date for one of the conferences I am attending in March was TODAY!!!! Argh...
So I whipped up a quick 4 pager proposal: "Towards a classification of criterion referenced assessment models in mathematics courses - student and academic perspectives". Jen Flegg is on as co-author of course for her work with the survey design, and presumably some help in the future with drafting and proofing the final paper ;-)
Some things to note for the future here:
So I whipped up a quick 4 pager proposal: "Towards a classification of criterion referenced assessment models in mathematics courses - student and academic perspectives". Jen Flegg is on as co-author of course for her work with the survey design, and presumably some help in the future with drafting and proofing the final paper ;-)
Some things to note for the future here:
- Keep track of the due dates of proposals!!!
- Education conferences require much longer "proposals" than the abstracts I am familiar with for maths conferences. So far I've done a 3 pager and a 4 pager.
Also, yes I realise that this sounds a lot like what I talked about at QANZIAM. But it's more subtle than that. My thinking is that the whole criterion referenced assessment experiment thing that I ran this semester has a few prongs:
- there's just the idea of CRA in a maths course and how it is perceived by students
- there's the comparison of this across two courses (namely, PDEs and DEs, but anything really)
- and there's developing different models of how to implement CRA for mathematics courses.
The last one of these is what I'm really getting at in this conference paper. I think that there are different ways to interpret the idea of a "criterion" and thus for designing its associated "standards". If you put some thought into it, these can be used to really reflect to a student what you believe in as being important in a mathematical response to a question/problem, thereby providing them with a better chance of doing what is required (by the discipline expert) and of course, getting the best mark.
Well, it's in now...but scrappy of course, so fingers crossed that it's accepted.
Well, it's in now...but scrappy of course, so fingers crossed that it's accepted.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Day 5: aka Day 2 of QANZIAM 2010
A much more civilised 6.30 awakening today. Breakfast, then basically straight up to the conf for an earlier 9am start.
The student talks were finished off in the morning with Kelly Murphy, Mike Hsieh and Jackie Horne. All nice topics - hypertrophic scars, drug delivery/moving boundary problems, and bone healing respectively. Then Owen Jepps from Griffith finished off the morning session talking about topical delivery of treatments on the skin - something I will be investigating myself next year with a Pharmacy researcher from Otago (Natalie Medlicott).
Aftern morning tea I was up. The talk went ok I think, with lots of input and discussion from the audience, especially Graeme. But that meant I went way over time (10mins) so I'm sorry about that. But went ok I think. I got a few good ideas to help frame my next talk and also the paper that should come out of the work. I actually got a few things straight in my head as I spoke.
Scotty went next - talking about a "simple" example that he thinks would work well in an undergrad/grad class on asymptotics. I understood a fair bit of it which was impressive to me! I honestly can't recall really what he spoke about, but there was lots of integration in the complex plane and singularities expansions in small parameters and so forth.
Graeme then came on and talked about his work with Wechselberger that extends his holes in the wall of singularities work from his PhD back in the 90s. This was cool because I had also done some of this stuff in my PhD - analysis of phase planes with DEs of the form f(u,v) u' = g(u,v) and v'=h(u,v) where f can go to 0 giving a wall of singularities in the plane. G and Wechselberger looked at the problem under a different light, actually INCREASING the number of equations (rather than simplifying to less) to look at the problem in a higher dimensional space and showing that solutions through the wall (when f=g=0) can exist and what's more, are stable. They also demonstrated stable jump solutions. All quite cool - this was my favourite talk I think.
The last talk was Vivien Challis from UQ who also talked about topology optimisation but related to bone implants.
That was about it. QANZIAM as always was relaxed and fun... it was no Stanthorpe though :P
The student talks were finished off in the morning with Kelly Murphy, Mike Hsieh and Jackie Horne. All nice topics - hypertrophic scars, drug delivery/moving boundary problems, and bone healing respectively. Then Owen Jepps from Griffith finished off the morning session talking about topical delivery of treatments on the skin - something I will be investigating myself next year with a Pharmacy researcher from Otago (Natalie Medlicott).
Aftern morning tea I was up. The talk went ok I think, with lots of input and discussion from the audience, especially Graeme. But that meant I went way over time (10mins) so I'm sorry about that. But went ok I think. I got a few good ideas to help frame my next talk and also the paper that should come out of the work. I actually got a few things straight in my head as I spoke.
Scotty went next - talking about a "simple" example that he thinks would work well in an undergrad/grad class on asymptotics. I understood a fair bit of it which was impressive to me! I honestly can't recall really what he spoke about, but there was lots of integration in the complex plane and singularities expansions in small parameters and so forth.
Graeme then came on and talked about his work with Wechselberger that extends his holes in the wall of singularities work from his PhD back in the 90s. This was cool because I had also done some of this stuff in my PhD - analysis of phase planes with DEs of the form f(u,v) u' = g(u,v) and v'=h(u,v) where f can go to 0 giving a wall of singularities in the plane. G and Wechselberger looked at the problem under a different light, actually INCREASING the number of equations (rather than simplifying to less) to look at the problem in a higher dimensional space and showing that solutions through the wall (when f=g=0) can exist and what's more, are stable. They also demonstrated stable jump solutions. All quite cool - this was my favourite talk I think.
The last talk was Vivien Challis from UQ who also talked about topology optimisation but related to bone implants.
That was about it. QANZIAM as always was relaxed and fun... it was no Stanthorpe though :P
Day 4: aka Day 1 of QANZIAM 2010
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| The last of the free flowing traffic for quite a while. |
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| This is basically the whole room. BTW: I don't think either of them is hiding on purpose. |
So now to Day 4. Yet again, since I had written my talk, I was free to wander about. So when Dan woke at 5ish, we went out into the fog and walked around for an hour or so. It was great - very quiet, cool and no-one around - it's good to be alone sometimes. We saw some bunnies hopping about in the fog and then a horse over the other side of a small pond, which for some reason (probably the fog coupled with its reflection in the pond) looked like a sloth.
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| Early morning walk - doing our "this is scary" faces. |
After a while I made my way up to the conference room and said hi to some folks waiting outside. There were about 20 people there I think.
The talks got started eventually and there were some really good ones I thought. Particularly Amy Chan, an hons student from UQ who talked about topology optimisation...something that has always puzzled me. Scott's army of PhD students also went well and the invited speaker (Mike Plank - University of Canterbury) was interesting too - he talked about modelling populations of fish essentially.
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| This is how we roll people. Macs, pens and paper and sticks to open our beers. |
That was basically it for me for the day. We had HJs for dinner and skipped the conf dinner to try to give Little Dan a good night sleep.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Day 3: QANZIAM talk - finshed version, the first.
So here it is. QANZIAM talk, take 1. Doubtful that I will get back on here for any reasonable length post today, so this is probably it. I may post some photos tonight of the stunning conference venue: The Gympie Conference Centre.
QANZIAM slides
QANZIAM slides
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Day 2
Second day of the non-teaching period.
PhD supervision with Tris this morning. We discussed her work on fixing my errors in a preliminary CA code to model colorectal cancer development and immune cell interactions with the tumour cells. Good work really. We have implemented a framework code for the model, but now need to work on developing realistic rules based on the known biology, including diffusible species in the calculations and rules. Translating all of this into words to slot into a draft manuscript is also currently on our minds.
I also continued work on my QANZIAM talk. It's about student perceptions of criterion referenced assessment in university maths classes. Working on the QANZIAM talk so much is actually something I'm okay with: even though it is only QANZIAM, it will help in building the paper that will come out of the work. Today I brought down the data from the surveys (designed by Jen Flegg) on surveymonkey and starting some preliminary work on that - no series stats, just descriptive and summary work. What I'm hoping for here is to get a whole heap of fairly basic conference papers out as well as some more advanced journal papers that synthesise the finding across the units in which I experimented.
Tonight I've been working on FaST curriculum renewal work. That doesn't sound like research, but the way I'm viewing it, it is. We are attempting to build a culture of importance of teaching and learning, and research into T&L, within FaST. This means developing a plan for staff PD (incl seminar series to disseminate research, T&L experiments etc), a series of invited speakers to guide our work and provide us with input from external experts, a commissioned grants scheme which will see curriculum renewal work receiving (at least some) funding from the Faculty for directly relevant projects that will run like educational research projects with a view to applying for (and hopefully gaining) external funding such as that available from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
Phew...that's it.
PhD supervision with Tris this morning. We discussed her work on fixing my errors in a preliminary CA code to model colorectal cancer development and immune cell interactions with the tumour cells. Good work really. We have implemented a framework code for the model, but now need to work on developing realistic rules based on the known biology, including diffusible species in the calculations and rules. Translating all of this into words to slot into a draft manuscript is also currently on our minds.
I also continued work on my QANZIAM talk. It's about student perceptions of criterion referenced assessment in university maths classes. Working on the QANZIAM talk so much is actually something I'm okay with: even though it is only QANZIAM, it will help in building the paper that will come out of the work. Today I brought down the data from the surveys (designed by Jen Flegg) on surveymonkey and starting some preliminary work on that - no series stats, just descriptive and summary work. What I'm hoping for here is to get a whole heap of fairly basic conference papers out as well as some more advanced journal papers that synthesise the finding across the units in which I experimented.
Tonight I've been working on FaST curriculum renewal work. That doesn't sound like research, but the way I'm viewing it, it is. We are attempting to build a culture of importance of teaching and learning, and research into T&L, within FaST. This means developing a plan for staff PD (incl seminar series to disseminate research, T&L experiments etc), a series of invited speakers to guide our work and provide us with input from external experts, a commissioned grants scheme which will see curriculum renewal work receiving (at least some) funding from the Faculty for directly relevant projects that will run like educational research projects with a view to applying for (and hopefully gaining) external funding such as that available from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
Phew...that's it.
Day 1 (posted a day late)
Wednesday 20 October marks the start of an extended period without teaching! The plan is to document what happens over the period of about 9.5 months so that I can look back and either copy this next time (if it's a success) or b) figure out where I went wrong (if it's a dud).
What happened on Day 1
So there is some teaching activity still going on, and of course my other job working on the Faculty curriculum renewal etc...but:
- Made a QUT Beamer template
- Wrote part of QANZIAM seminar
- Attempted to convince Scotty to begin work in new research area (research into postgrad supervision)...I reckon it's a good idea, but he'll need more pushing.
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