News Archive

 

2010

 

The Mathematics Department would like to extend an invitation to our Algebraic Geometry Conference at St Patrick's College Drumcondra on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th November 2010. A complete programme, including a list of speakers, is available here. For more information, contact Madeeha Khalid.

 

Sinead Breen presented a talk entitled Measuring Students' Persistence on Unfamiliar Tasks at the BSRLM conference in Newcastle University on Saturday 13th November. This paper, which appears in the informal proceedings of the meeting, presented findings of a study undertaken with Drs Ann O'Shea, NUIM and Joan Cleary, IoT, Tralee.

 

Madeeha Khalid gave a talk on Azumaya algebras on K3 surfaces and their relation to Hodge isometries, in the Mathematics department at University College Cork, on Nov 5th 2010.  The talk was followed by an animated discussion session with the algebraic geometry and analysis group in the Mathematics Department at University College Cork.

 

Maths Week Ireland 2010 kicks off on Saturday 9th October and, for the fifth year running, sees events organised throughout the country to promote awareness, appreciation and understanding of mathematics for all. A schedule of nationwide events can be found at www.mathsweek.ie, while details of local events at St Patrick's College can be found here.

 

The NAIRTL/LIN Conference on Flexible Learning held in the Royal College of Surgeons 6-7 October 2010 featured a presentation on a cross-disciplinary project led by Dolores Corcoran, involving members of the Education and Mathematics Departments at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra and funded by NAIRTL. Maurice OReilly and Sinead Breen joined Dolores to present initial findings on Learning from Engagement of Cross-disciplinary Lesson Study.

 

A poster entitled Using mathematical identity to gain insight into how students prefer to learn mathematics was presented by Maurice OReilly and his co-author Patricia Eaton (Stranmillis University College) at smec 2010.

 

CASTeL – the Centre for the Advancement of Science and Mathematics Teaching & Learning – is a multidisciplinary research team involving scientists, mathematicians and educationalists from St Patrick's College, Drumcondra and Dublin City University. Inquiry-based learning: Facilitating authentic learning experiences in science and mathematics is the fourth in a series of biennial international Science and Mathematics Education Conferences (SMEC) to be hosted by CASTeL, and will take place on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th September in DCU. An excellent line-up of invited speakers - Prof. Barbara Jaworski (Loughborough), Ass. Prof. Sarah Lubienski (Illinois), Dr Donna Messina (Seattle), Prof. Jonathan Osborne (Stanford) - promises an engaging and stimulating conference for those interested in science and mathematics education at any level. Further details of the conference can be found here.

 

Maurice OReilly presented a CASTeL seminar entitled
History and pedagogy of mathematics - a personal journey in an international context in St Patrick's College on Wednesday 16th June.

 

Madeeha Khalid participated in the 17th Irish Quantum Field Theory Meeting on Friday 28th May with a talk on K3 sufaces involutions and their orbifold limits.

 

 

The Irish Geometry conference held in NUI Maynooth on 14th & 15th May featured a talk entitled K3 surfaces with special involutions by Madeeha Khalid.

 

 

A one-day workshop to consider Mathematical Identity and
to explore what implications it might have for teaching and research in Mathematics and Mathematics Education is being organised by Maurice O'Reilly and Patricia Eaton (Stranmillis). This workshop will be held on Friday 7th May in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra: full details for those interested in attending can be found here.

 

As part of a module in the History of Mathematics, two second-year BA students, Niamh Barrett and Kate McNerney, presented a poster at the first Women in Mathematics Day in Ireland (WIMDI) held in UL on 27th April, showing the contribution of women in mathematics from an historical perspective both internationally and in Ireland. We congratulate these students on making the only undergraduate presentation at the event. On the same day, another student, Helen Dermody, taking the same module,
attended a meeting of the National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology. The committee was very interested in her perspective on its work and is likely to take her recommendations on board.

 

A paper entitled Exploring the role of confidence, theory of intelligence and goal orientation in determining a student’s persistence on mathematical tasks coauthored by Ann O'Shea (NUIM), Joan Cleary (IT, Tralee) and Sinead Breen was presented at BCME7 in Manchester, April 6-9 and appears in the conference proceedings.

 

Maurice OReilly gave a presentation entitled Confluence of diverse elements in teaching an undergraduate course in the History of Mathematics at a joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) and the Higher Education Academy MSOR network, at the University of Greenwich on 30th March.

 

 

In his seminar entitled Gauss-Jacobi Advances on 16th February, Dr John Cosgrave brought his audience on a tour of Number Theory from early discoveries of Euclid and Diophantus through to his own recent work. This work, in collaboration with Prof Karl Dilcher, has resulted in the formulation and proof of extensions of congruences of Gauss and Jacobi from the early nineteenth century. The seminar was very well-received by staff and students alike.

 

The Mathematics Department was delighted to host John Mason, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Education at the Open University, as a visitor to the College from 1st to 3rd February 2010. Academic Mathematics students were treated to workshops on Thinking Mathematically with Prof Mason, while teachers and teacher educators interested in Mathematics Education at all levels of the education system travelled from as far away as Kerry, Galway and Belfast to attend his seminar on Developing and Exploiting Rich Tasks. Prof Mason's workshops and seminar provided those present with the rare pleasure of witnessing many elements of mathematics education theory being transformed into practice both elegantly and effectively.

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Last Updated: Tuesday January 24 2012