Spectacular astronomy pictures from NASA

Take a look ::
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Have fun !

partha

An amazing teacher

I came across the website of Prof. GARY T. LEAVENS (leavens@eecs.ucf.edu) of the Universsity of
Central Florida, USA. He has an amazing variety of achievements. His web site is an inspiration and gold mine for all of us teachers. Let us try and emulate his way of inspiring people.

Prof. Leavens website is at ::

http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~leavens/homepage.html

partha

Problem solving books in mathematics

A good compilation of maths books is at :
http://ansomniac.blogspot.com/

This compilation was made by the same student from IIT Kharagpur, who was so very upset by the quality of his teachers (see my blog post "Lament of a student". Instead of brushing him aside as a "grumbler", I am happy that I decided to listen (that is what teachers should be doing).

I am sure this list should be useful for many of my colleague teachers.

partha

Lament of a student

I received this mail recently from a student of maths. If this is what a student feels, we teachers have a lot to think about.


partha



QUOTE //**
Dear Sir,

I am third year undergraduate student at Dept of Mathematics, IIT KGP. And the first thing I would like to say is that the Department Sucks!
I apologize for the language but this is the best I can do considering the enormous amount of frustration I have right now.

I love maths (mainly pure maths) and I am pretty good at it, well at least good enough to understand and appreciate the beauty and depth of this subject. I was up all night going through the awesome library of math books that I have created at my room, solving some olympiad problems and now I'll sleep till the evening missing all my lectures. Is it the right thing to do? Well if the "professors" who teach us maths have no love for the subject or teaching then I think that it is. And I even have real doubts about the competence of some profs as well. Ask them a problem and they'll fumble and they'll ask for some time till the next class and even then it seems like they just mugged up a solution.

It's pathetic! I want to complain, I want to shout at the administration, at the profs, abuse them! But I can't, because I fear they'll ruin my only chance of escape - going for a PhD in maths at a better place, a place where the people teach because they love teaching and because they are good at it.

I am sorry for bothering you with this mail, but after reading your article I felt that you are one of those people who can understand my frustration and I felt like venting.

**// UNQUOTE

The article which provoked the above mail was here originally ::

http://www.freewebs.com/profpartha/publications/futile.pdf

The above article is now at ::

https://drpartha.org.in/publications/futile.pdf

***

Video courses for self-tutoring

I stumbled upon a good starting point for
Free Online Courses and Video Lectures ::
http://freevideolectures.com/blog/.

Take a look.

partha

Squid proxy server

Beginner's Guide Available for Squid Proxy Server 3.1

The widely used web proxy server Squid is used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other people running web sites to make web access more efficient, for example by locally storing ("caching") web content that is frequently used. Read more, at ::

http://linux.about.com/b/2011/03/12/beginners-guide-available-for-squid-proxy-server-3-1.htm?nl=1

Abel Prize 2011

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2011 to John Milnor, Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Stony Brook University, New York “for pioneering discoveries in topology, geometry and algebra”. Professor Milnor has received all the major awards in Mathematics: He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1962, the Wolf Prize in 1989 and is the only person to have won all the three Steele Prizes of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in 1982, 2004 and early this year for seminal contribution to research, for mathematical exposition and for lifetime achievement respectively. He also received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1967.

Prof Milnor's biography is at
http://www.abelprisen.no/en/prisvinnere/2011/.

Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829) was a brilliant Norwegian mathematician who accomplished an amazing amount of brilliant work in his short lifetime. Abel died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 after being forced to live in miserable conditions because of his inability to obtain a university post. The offer of a professorship in Berlin was not forthcoming for four years, by which time it was too late. The letter arrived two days after Abel's death, informing him that he had been offered professorship at the University of Berlin.

In GOD's own country

Visited Vimal Jyothi engineering College, Chemperi, near kannur, Kerala. This college, located in a remote and isolated village, in the midst of a thick forest of rubber trees, gives a paradise like feeling. I hope to be able to visit this place more often.

Talking Linux in GOD's own country

Just back from a trip to Kerala aka "GOD's own country". Had a pleasant experience of talking about Linux at Vimal Jyothi Engineering College (VJEC), Chemperi, near Kannur, Kerala. I also had the pleasure of eplaining the benefits of FOSS, to the teaching staff and Administrators of VJEC.

Linux wallpapers

I have created and uploaded a bunch of pictures for use as the wallpaper ib your Linux boxes. Take a look, and download these pictures, from ::

https://picasaweb.google.com/drpartha/Linuxwallpapers#

Have fun !

partha