Daily Archives: March 16, 2012

General Mathematics

Learn maths by doing maths

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Teachers should allow pupils to learn maths by using it rather than focusing on abstract concepts, says an expert.

Judith Burns, Education reporter, BBC News

Mathematics has a reputation of being very hard to learn. It is true that mathematics is a difficult subject that is multilayered and involves abstract thinking. This is compounded by the way in which mathematics in the UK is taught. Quite often it is difficult to see how mathematics is relevant to the everyday world.

For those of us that know, we see mathematics all around us.

Professor Dave Pratt of the Institute of Education argues that teaching methods should help the students engauge with mathematics and see how it is used. Mathematics is not just pure abstract thinking, but is a powerful tool to be employed in many contexts and this should come across in the teaching of the subject.

Read the BBC news report here.

Research work

Odd Jacobi manifolds: general theory and applications to generalised Lie algebroids

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My paper “Odd Jacobi manifolds: general theory and applications to generalised Lie algebroids” has been accepted for publication in Extracta Mathematicae.

The paper is an amalgimation of three preprints:

arXiv:1111.4044v3, arXiv:1103.1803v1 and arXiv:1101.1844v3.

Abstract

In this paper we define a Grassmann odd analogue of Jacobi structure on a supermanifold. The basic properties are explored. The construction of odd Jacobi manifolds is then used to reexamine the notion of a Jacobi algebroid. It is shown that Jacobi algebroids can be understood in terms of a kind of curved Q-manifold, which we will refer to as a quasi Q-manifold.

I will post more details in due course.