National Committee for Mathematics Activities in 1997

After May the Committee was involved in a variety of activities.

Discipline Review--Status Report

Early in 1997 the Chairman of the Australian Research Council (ARC), Professor Max Brennan, wrote requesting a report on the current status of the implementation of the recommendations of the 1996 Discipline Review. A report was forwarded on the 4th July and a copy is contained on the website (Disc. Review-Status 97) A flavour of the report is given by the quotation

......the Review Report has been generally well received by the profession and the relevant recommendations are being implemented within the limitations set by external bodies. In contrast the recommendations have received little or no support from DIST, DEETYA, the ARC or the AVCC. Many government reforms such as increased HECS and reduced tax incentives have had effects contrary to those envisaged in the Report. A failure to protect basis science within a climate of economic constraint has been coupled with a notable decrease in university enrolments in the science and mathematics areas. University rationalization schemes driven by the consequent economic stringencies have also had a negative impact on the discipline.

International Congress 1998

The International Congress of Mathematicians 1998 (ICM'98) takes place in Berlin from August 18th to the 27th. The local organizers have prepared a two page First Announcement with basic information about the meeting and plan to mail it out at the beginning of September. In order to achieve maximum Australian exposure for the meeting the First Announcement will be published in the Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society and apppear on their website in addition to appearing on the ICM'98 page of this site. It will also be circulated to the AustMS electronic list of Australian mathematical scientists. Note that it is necessary to respond individually to the First Announcement in order to receive the comprehensive Second Announcement.

IMU--General Assembly

The 13th General Assembly of the IMU will be held in Dresden on August the 15th and 16th immediately preceding the ICM'98. Australia has a maximum delegation of three members each with a voting right. The Secretary of the IMU requested the Academy to nominate the delegates and after some consultation it was agreed that Profs. Alan Carey (Adelaide), Derek Robinson (ANU) and Ian Sloan (UNSW) would form the delegation. One important item of business of the Assembly is the election of the Executive Committee of the IMU, the Executive Committee of the International Commission for Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) and the Executive Committee of the International Commission for History of Mathematics (ICHM).

World Directory of Mathematicians

The Executive Committee of the IMU commissioned the American Mathematical Society to collect material for the 11th edition of the World Directory of Mathematicians and responsibility for the list of Australian entries was delegated to the NCM. The general criterion of admissibility to the Directory is two articles reviewed in Mathematical Reviews, Referativnyi Zhurnal, or Zentralblatt fuer Mathematik over the preceding five years, or the publication of five papers reviewed in these journals at any time. The NCM could also use its discretion in adding a limited number of appropriate additional names.

The list of Australian based mathematicians in the 10th edition of the directory contained 516 names and was assembled from staff lists of university departments and other relevant bodies. Since electronic communication has become widespread in the last five years it seemed it could be exploited to prepare a more complete and accurate list for the new edition. Consequently two appeals were made to mathematical scientists appearing on the electronic mail list administered by the Mathematical Society to submit the relevant data. In addition a separate appeal was made to Heads of Departments for lists of eligible people. This experiment was a miserable failure! It resulted in the submission of less than 200 names. Either the efficiency of electronic communication has been overestimated or the apathy of the mathematical community has been underestimated. In any case other means were necessary to construct a new list.

The list of entries for the 10th edition had been prepared at the University of New South Wales and at a relatively late date an electronic copy was obtained, courtesy of Janette Kos. This list together with the responses to the earlier appeals then formed the basis for the new list. After editing the old list to remove entries that were no longer relevant and then adding new entries from the submissions a draft list of 541 names was obtained. This was then posted on the website and a message circulated through the Mathematical Society list pointing out that corrections could be submitted to the Chair of the NCM and omissions could be corrected. This led to a satisfying flurry of activity over the last week before the deadline specified by the IMU. In particular several Heads of Departments did react to the lack of representation or incorrect listing of their staff. After a burst of late additions the list expanded to contain 632 names. The final list, as submitted to the American Mathematical Society on the 15th October 97, appears elsewhere on the website. It is intended that it will remain available for reference and to facilitate subsequent revisions.

Numeracy

During 1997 literacy and numeracy benchmarks for the Australian Institute system were developed by the Federal Government with the intention of introducing them in primary institutes in 1998. Responsibility for this project was passed to the Curriculum Corporation. The AMSC has consistently raised concerns about the process and product. Subsequently they were invited to nominate appropriately qualified consultants to comment on the benchmarks as they developed. The quality of the draft material circulated by the Curriculum Corporation for years 3 and 5 caused concern among many of the consultants, concerns echoed by the AAMT. Consequently the Vice-President of the AMSC, Jan Thomas, and the Chair of the NCM, Derek Robinson, wrote to Dr. Kemp, the then Minister for Institutes, expressing these concerns. This led to a meeting with Dr. Evan Arthur of DEETYA, a member of the Benchmarking Taskforce, on the 21st October. This meeting was followed by a meeting with the Hon. Christopher Ellison, who had by that time taken over the Junior Ministry as Dr. Kemp was promoted to Senior Minister.

These meetings were used to clarify the meaning of numeracy within the context of the project and the intentions of the benchmark scheme. It was generally agreed that the latter was worthwhile and could well improve mathematical standards if the benchmarks were realistic and used appropriately. The Minister noted the concerns expressed and promised to consult further with the AMSC, the NCM and the AAMT. Subsequently, the President of the AMSC, Noel Barton, was invited to meet with the Ministers and other advisors to discuss these matters more fully.

A meeting took place at Parliament House on the evening of the 4th November between Ministers Kemp and Ellison, Noel Barton, Garth Gaudry, Derek Robinson and Jan Thomas on behalf of the AMSC and the NCM, Bruce Wilson and Catherine McClean of the Curriculum Corporation, together with Evan Arthur and other DEETYA staff members. The meeting took an hour and a half and exhaustively covered both background, current status and areas of concern of the benchmarking. Minister Kemp expressed strongly his desire that the benchmark project proceed in 1998. He appreciated, however, that the innovative nature of the material could lead to difficulties of definition, of level and of quality. Therefore it was decided to organize a two-day meeting in the second week of December to review the benchmarks. The meeting, funded through DEETYA, will bring together members of the Curriculum Corporation and consultants nominated by the AMSC and AAMT to revise, rewrite and hopefully finalize the project in its initial form. Noel Barton asked Jan Thomas to liaise with the Curriculum Corporation over this meeting. In addition DEETYA was asked to fund the collection of some international data. It is expected that this work will be undertaken by Jan Lokan of ACER.

At the end of the meeting the representatives of the AMSC and the NCM raised two other matters of concern, the decrease in staffing levels of mathematical scientists at the tertiary level and the pressure on the ARC Fellowships and Research Grant Schemes. The Minister promised to follow up these latter concerns.

The scheduled numeracy meeting took place on the 8th and 9th of December and good progress appear to have been made although subsequent reporting caused some concern. Curriculum Corporation did take note of issues raised by AMSC and Dr. Kemp has stressed that he wanted the AMSC to feel comfortable about this project. The value of these various consultations will only become evident during the trials of the benchmark material in 1998.