Archive for mathematics

« Older Entries

String theory lied to us and now science communication is hard…

Posted in mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on April 30, 2023 by telescoper

Taking the opportunity of the Bank Holiday weekend to catch up on some other blogs, I found this video on Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong. It’s by Angela Collier. It’s a bit long for what it says, and I find the silly game going on while the speaker talks very irritating, but the speaker makes some very good points and it’s well worth watching all the way through. The most important message it conveys, I think, is how the hype surrounding string theory contributed to increasing public distrust of science and the media.

If I were a string theorist I probably wouldn’t appreciate this video, but I’m not and I do!

4 Comments »

Newsflash – New MSc Course at Maynooth!

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth with tags , , on April 8, 2023 by telescoper

I know it’s the Easter holiday weekend but I couldn’t resist sharing the exciting news that we have just received approval for a brand new Masters course at Maynooth University in Theoretical Physics & Mathematics. The new postgraduate course will be run jointly between the Departments of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics & Statistics, with each contributing about half the material. The duration is one calendar year (full-time) or two years (part-time) and consists of 90 credits in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). This will be split into 60 credits of taught material (split roughly 50-50 between Theoretical Physics and Mathematics) and a research project of 30 credits, supervised by a member of staff in a relevant area from either Department.

This new course is a kind of follow-up to the existing undergraduate BSc Theoretical Physics & Mathematics at Maynooth, also run jointly . We think the postgraduate course will appeal to many of the students on that programme who wish to continue their education to postgraduate level, though applications are very welcome from suitably qualified candidates elsewhere.

Although the idea of this course has been on the cards for quite a while, the pandemic and other issues delayed it until now. This has so recently been agreed that it doesn’t yet exist on the University admissions webpages. This blog post is therefore nothing more than a sneak preview. There isn’t much time between now and September, when the course runs for the first time, which is why I decided to put this advanced notice on here! I will give fuller details on how to apply when they are available. You will also find further information on the Department’s Twitter feed, so if you’re interested I suggest you give them a follow.

4 Comments »

Foirmlí agus Táblaí

Posted in Education, Maynooth with tags , , on April 1, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve written on here before about Log Tables but since I’ve recently acquired a set of my own I thought I’d celebrate by mentioning them again. This is what the term “Log Tables” refers to in Ireland:

This book is in regular use in schools and colleges throughout Ireland, but that the term is a shorthand for a booklet containing a general collection of mathematical formulae, scientific data and other bits of stuff that might come in useful to students. There are a lot more formulae than tables, but everyone has calculators now so those aren’t really necessary. There is no table of logarithms in the Log Tables, actually. I suppose much older versions did have more tables, but as these were phased out the name just stuck and they’re still called Log Tables.

The official book costs €4. I bought it in Maynooth’s excellent local independent bookshop. The man who served me knew exactly what I meant when I asked for Log Tables.

I’m old enough to remember actually using tables of logarithms (and other mathematical tables  of such things as square roots and trigonometric functions, in the form of lists of numbers) extensively at school. These were provided in this book of four-figure tables (which you can now buy for 1p on Amazon, plus p&p).

As a historical note I’ll point out that I was in the first year at my school that progressed to calculators rather than slide rules (in the third year) so I was never taught how to use the former. My set of four-figure tables which was so heavily used that it was falling to bits anyway, never got much use after that and I threw it out when I went to university despite the fact that I’m a notorious hoarder.

Students in Theoretical Physics at Maynooth are allowed to ask for Log Tables in any formal examination. The formulae contained therein are elementary in terms of physics, so won’t help very much with more advanced examinations, but I have no problem with students consulting the Log Tables if their mind goes a bit blank.  It seems to me that an examination shouldn’t be a memory test, and giving students the basic formulae as a starting point if anything allows the examiner to concentrate on testing what matters much more, i.e. the ability to formulate and solve a problem. The greatest challenge of science education at University level is, in my opinion, convincing students that their brain is much more than a memory device.

Here’s an example page that shows some elementary formulae for Mechanics with explanations as Gaeilge in English.

These formulae come up in Physics and/or Applied Mathematics at Leaving Certificate but we don’t require students taking Mechanics in the first year to have done either of those subjects so many students find pages such as this very helpful.

I was interested to learn that colleagues in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics here in Maynooth do not allow the use of Log Tables in examinations. I don’t know why.

2 Comments »

The Elements of Euclid

Posted in mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on February 15, 2023 by telescoper

My recent post pointing out that the name of the space mission Euclid is not formed as an acronym but is an homage to the Greek mathematician Euclid (actually Εὐκλείδης in Greek) prompted me to do a post about the Euclid of geometry and mathematics rather than the Euclid of cosmology, so here goes.

When I was a lad – yes, it’s one of those tedious posts about how things were better in the old days – we grammar school kids spent a disproportionate amount of time learning geometry in pretty much the way it has been taught since the days of Euclid. In fact, I still have a copy of the classic Hall & Stevens textbook based on Euclid’s Elements, from which I scanned the proof shown below (after checking that it’s now out of copyright).

This, Proposition 5 of Book I of the Elements, is in fact quite a famous proof known as the Pons Asinorum:

The old-fashioned way we learned geometry required us to prove all kinds of bizarre theorems concerning the shapes and sizes of triangles and parallelograms, properties of chords intersecting circles, angles subtended by various things, tangents to circles, and so on and so forth. Although I still remember various interesting results I had to prove way back then – such as the fact that the angle subtended by a chord at the centre of a circle is twice that subtended at the circumference (Book III, Proposition 20) – I haven’t actually used many of them since. The one notable exception I can think of is Pythagoras’ Theorem (Book I, Proposition 47), which is of course extremely useful in many branches of physics.

The apparent irrelevance of most of the theorems one was required to prove is no doubt the reason why “modern” high school mathematics syllabuses have ditched this formal approach to geometry. I think this was a big mistake. The bottom line in a geometrical proof is not what’s important – it’s how you get there. In particular, it’s learning how to structure a mathematical argument.

That goes not only for proving theorems, but also for solving problems; many of Euclid’s propositions are problems rather than theorems, in fact. I remember well being taught to end the proof of a theorem with QED (Quod Erat Demonstrandum; “which was to be proved”) but end the solution of a problem with QEF (Quod Erat Faciendum; “which was to be done”).

You can see what I mean by looking at the Pons Asinorum, which is a very simple theorem to prove but which illustrates the general structure:

  1. GIVEN
  2. TO PROVE
  3. CONSTRUCTION
  4. PROOF

When you have completed many geometrical proofs this way it becomes second nature to confront any  problem in mathematics (or physics) following the same steps, which are key ingredients of a successful problem-solving strategy

First you write down what is given (or can be assumed), often including the drawing of a diagram. Next you have to understand precisely what you need to prove, so write that down too. It seems trivial, but writing things down on paper really does help. Not all theorems require a “construction”, and that’s usually the bit where ingenuity comes in, so is more difficult. However, the “proof” then follows as a series of logical deductions, with reference to earlier (proved) propositions given in the margin.

This structure carries over perfectly well to problems involving algebra or calculus (or even non-Euclidean geometry) but I think classical geometry provides the ideal context to learn it because it involves visual as well as symbolic logic – it’s not just abstract reasoning in that compasses, rulers and protractors can help you!

I don’t think it’s a particular problem for universities that relatively few students know how to prove, e.g.,  the perpendicular bisector theorem, but it definitely is a problem that so many have no idea what a mathematical proof should even look like.

Come back Euclid, all is forgiven!

7 Comments »

Putting girls off Physics

Posted in Education, mathematics, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on January 9, 2023 by telescoper

I see that Katharine Birbalsingh has resigned from her job as UK Government commissioner for social mobility. Apparently she feels she was “doing more harm than good”. If only the rest of the Government had that level of self-awareness.

I wrote about Katharine Birbalsingh last year, and her departure gives me the excuse to repeat what I said then. Birbalsingh is Head of a school in which only 16% of the students taking physics A-level are female (the national average is about 23%) and tried to explain this by saying that girls don’t like doing “hard maths”.

..physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it, they don’t like it.

Gender stereotyping begins at school, it seems.

There is an easy rebuttal of this line of “reasoning”. First, there is no “hard maths” in Physics A-level. Most of the mathematical content (especially differential calculus) was removed years ago. Second, the percentage of students taking actual A-level Mathematics in the UK who are female is more like 40% than 20% and girls do better at Mathematics than boys at A-level. The argument that girls are put off Physics because it includes Maths is therefore demonstrably bogus.

An alternative explanation for the figures is that schools (especially the one led by Katharine Birbalsingh, where the take-up is even worse than the national average) provide an environment that actively discourages girls from being interested in Physics by reinforcing gender stereotypes even in schools that offer Physics A-level in the first place. The attitudes of teachers and school principals undoubtedly have a big influence on the life choices of students, which is why it is so depressing to hear lazy stereotypes repeated once again.

There is no evidence whatsoever that women aren’t as good at Maths and Physics as men once they get into the subject, but plenty of evidence that the system dissuades then early on from considering Physics as a discipline they want to pursue. Indeed, at University female students generally out-perform male students in Physics when it comes to final results; it’s just that there are few of them to start with.

Anyway, I thought of a way of addressing gender inequality in physics admissions about 8 years ago. The idea was to bring together two threads. I’ll repeat the arguments here.

The first is that, despite strenuous efforts by many parties, the fraction of female students taking A-level Physics has flat-lined at around 20% for at least two decades. This is the reason why the proportion of female physics students at university is the same, i.e. 20%. In short, the problem lies within the school system.

The second line of argument is that A-level Physics is not a useful preparation for a Physics degree anyway because it does not develop the sort of problem-solving skills or the ability to express physical concepts in mathematical language on which university physics depends. In other words it not only avoids “hard maths” but virtually all mathematics and, worse, is really very boring. As a consequence, most physics admissions tutors that I know care much more about the performance of students at A-level Mathematics than Physics, which is a far better indicator of their ability to study Physics at University than the Physics A-level.

Hitherto, most of the effort that has been expended on the first problem has been directed at persuading more girls to do Physics A-level. Since all UK universities require a Physics A-level for entry into a degree programme, this makes sense but it has not been very successful.

I believe that the only practical way to improve the gender balance on university physics course is to drop the requirement that applicants have A-level Physics entirely and only insist on Mathematics (which has a much more even gender mix). I do not believe that this would require many changes to course content but I do believe it would circumvent the barriers that our current school system places in the way of aspiring female physicists, bypassing the bottleneck at one stroke.

I suggested this idea when I was Head of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex, but it was firmly rejected by Senior Management because we would be out of line with other Physics departments. I took the view that in this context being out of line was a positive thing but that wasn’t the view of my bosses so the idea sank.

In case you think such a radical step is unworkable, I give you the example of our Physics programmes in Maynooth. We have a variety of these, including Theoretical Physics & Mathematics, Physics with Astrophysics, and Mathematical Physics and/or Experimental Physics through our omnibus science programme. Not one of these courses requires students to have taken Physics in their Leaving Certificate (roughly the equivalent of A-level) though as I explained in yesterday’s post, Mathematics is a compulsory subject at Leaving Certificate. The group of about first-year 130 students I taught this academic year is considerably more diverse than any physics class I ever taught in the UK, and not only in terms of gender…

I contend that the evidence suggests it’s not Mathematics that puts female students off Physics, a large part of it is A-level Physics.

4 Comments »

Writing Vectors

Posted in mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on October 11, 2021 by telescoper

Once again it’s time to introduce first-year Mathematical Physics students to the joy of vectors, or specifically Euclidean vectors. Some of my students have seen them before, but probably aren’t aware of how much we use them theoretical physics. Obviously we introduce the idea of a vector in the simplest way possible, as a directed line segment. It’s only later on, in the second year, that we explain how there’s much more to vectors than that and explain their relationship to matrices and tensors.

Although I enjoy teaching this subject I always have to grit my teeth when I write them in the form that seems obligatory these days.

You see, when I was a lad, I was taught to write a geometric vector in the following fashion:

\vec{r} =\left(\begin{array}{c} x \\ y \\ z \end{array} \right).

This is a simple column vector, where x,y,z are the components in a three-dimensional cartesian coordinate system. Other kinds of vector, such as those representing states in quantum mechanics, or anywhere else where linear algebra is used, can easily be represented in a similar fashion.

This notation is great because it’s very easy to calculate the scalar (dot) and vector (cross) products of two such objects by writing them in column form next to each other and performing a simple bit of manipulation. For example, the scalar product of the two vectors

\vec{u}=\left(\begin{array}{c} 1 \\ 1 \\ 1 \end{array} \right) and \vec{v}=\left(\begin{array}{c} 1 \\ 1 \\ -2 \end{array} \right)

can easily be found by multiplying the corresponding elements of each together and totting them up:

\vec{u} \cdot \vec{v} = (1 \times 1) + (1 \times 1) + (1\times -2) =0,

showing immediately that these two vectors are orthogonal. In normalised form, these two particular vectors appear in other contexts in physics, where they have a more abstract interpretation than simple geometry, such as in the representation of the gluon in particle physics.

Moreover, writing vectors like this makes it a lot easier to transform them via the action of a matrix, by multipying rows in the usual fashion, e.g.
\left(\begin{array}{ccc} \cos \theta & \sin\theta & 0 \\ -\sin\theta & \cos \theta & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1\end{array} \right) \left(\begin{array}{c} x \\ y \\ z \end{array} \right) = \left(\begin{array}{c} x\cos \theta + y\sin\theta \\ -x \sin \theta + y\cos \theta \\ z \end{array} \right)
which corresponds to a rotation of the vector in the x-y plane. Transposing a column vector into a row vector is easy too.

Well, that’s how I was taught to do it.

However, somebody, sometime, decided that, in Britain at least, this concise and computationally helpful notation had to be jettisoned and students instead must be forced to write a vector laboriously in terms of base vectors:

\vec{r} = x\hat{\imath} + y \hat{\jmath} + z \hat{k}

Some of you may even be used to doing it that way yourself. Why is this awful? For a start, it’s incredibly clumsy. It is less intuitive, doesn’t lend itself to easy operations on the vectors like I described above, doesn’t translate easily into the more general case of a matrix, and is generally just …well… awful. The only amusing thing about this is that you get to tell students not to put a dot on the “i” or the “j” – it always gets a laugh when you point out that these little dots are called “tittles“.

Worse still, for the purpose of teaching inexperienced students physics, it offers the possibility of horrible notational confusion. In particular, the unit vector \hat{\imath} is too easily confused with i, the square root of minus one. Introduce a plane wave with a wavevector \vec{k} and it gets even worse, especially when you want to write \exp(i\vec{k}\cdot \vec{x}), and if you want the answer to be the current density \vec{j} then you’re in big trouble!

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ll take the row and column notation any day!

(Actually it’s better still just to use the index notation, a_i which generalises easily to a_{ij} and, for that matter, a^{i}.)

Or perhaps being here in Ireland we should, in honour of Hamilton, do everything in quaternions.

4 Comments »

Littlewood on `the real point’ of lectures

Posted in Education, mathematics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on September 3, 2020 by telescoper

We’re often challenged these days to defend the educational value of the lecture as opposed to other forms of delivery, especially with the restrictions on large lectures imposed by Covid-19. But this is not a new debate. The mathematician J.E. Littlewood felt necessary to defend the lecture as a medium of instruction (in the context of advanced mathematics) way back in 1926 in the Introduction to his book The Elements of the Theory of Real Functions.

(as quoted by G. Temple in his Inaugural Lecture as Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Oxford in 1954 “The Classic and Romantic in Natural Philosophy”.)

Temple concluded his lecture with:

Classic perfection should be reserved for the monograph: the successful lecture is almost inevitably a romantic adventure. It is at once the grandeur and misery of a scientific classic that it says the last word: it is the charm of a scientific romance that it utters the first word, and thus opens the windows on a new world.

Modern textbooks do try to be more user-friendly than perhaps they were in Littlewood’s day, and they aren’t always “complete and accurate” either, but I think Littlewood is right in pointing out that they do often hide `the real point’ so students sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees. The value of lectures is not in trying to deliver masses of detail but to point out the important bits.

It seems apt to mention that the things I remember best from my undergraduate lectures at Cambridge are not what’s in my lecture notes – most of which I still have, incidentally – but some of the asides made by the lectures. In particular I remember Peter Scheuer who taught Electrodynamics & Relativity talking about his first experience of radio astronomy. He didn’t like electronics at all and wasn’t sure radio astronomy was for him, but someone – possibly Martin Ryle – reassured him by saying “All you need to know in order to do this is Ohm’s Law. But you need to know it bloody well.”

2 Comments »

On Grinds

Posted in Literature, mathematics with tags , , , , on July 24, 2020 by telescoper

When I moved to Ireland a couple of years ago, one of the words I discovered had a usage with which I was unfamiliar was grind. My first encounter with this word was after a lecture on vector calculus when a student asked if I knew of anyone who could offer him grinds. I didn’t know what he meant but was sure it wasn’t the meaning that sprang first into my mind so I just said no, I had just arrived in Ireland so didn’t know of anyone. I resisted the temptation to suggest he try finding an appropriate person via Grindr.

I only found out later that grinds are a form of private tuition and they are quite a big industry in Ireland, particularly at secondary school level. School students whose parents can afford it often take grinds in particular subjects to improve their performance on the Leaving Certificate. It seems to be less common for third level students to pay for grinds, but it does happen. More frequently university students actually offer grinds to local schoolkids as a kind of part-time employment to help them through college.

The word grind can also refer to a private tutor, i.e. you can have a maths grind. It can also be used as a verb, in which sense it means `to instil or teach by persistent repetition’.

This sense of the word grind may be in use in the United Kingdom but I have never come across it before, and it seems to me to be specific to Ireland.

All of which brings me back to vector calculus, via Charles Dickens.

In Hard Times by Charles Dickens there is a character by the name of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, a grimly utilitarain school superintendent who insisted on teaching only facts.

Thomas Gradgrind (engraving by Sol Eytinge, 1867).

If there is a Mr Gradgrind, why is there neither a Mr Divgrind nor a Mr Curlgrind?

10 Comments »

Math versus Maths

Posted in mathematics, Pedantry with tags , on June 8, 2020 by telescoper

I was amused by this discussion on Dictionary.Com of the different abbreviations of mathematics..

I’d like to think that ending is deliberate!

4 Comments »

R. I. P. John Conway (1937-2020)

Posted in Biographical, mathematics with tags , , , on April 12, 2020 by telescoper

I’ve just heard the sad news that that mathematician John Horton Conway has passed away at the age of 82.

John Conway made very distinguished contributions to many areas of mathematics, especially topology and knot theory, but to many of us he’ll be remembered as the inventor of the Game Of Life. I’ll remember him for that because one of the very first computer programs I ever wrote (in BASIC) was an implementation of that game.

It’s a great illustration of how simple rules can lead to complex structures and it paved the way to a huge increase in interest in cellular automata.

I think he got a bit fed up with people just associating him with a computer game and neglecting his deeper work, but he deserves great credit for directly or indirectly inspiring future scientists.

Rest in peace John Conway (1937-2020).

Leave a comment »

« Older Entries