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>> 22.12.03

In my thoughts
Although not a lot is being done at the moment is terms of my work, a lot of thought is going in to what to expect over the next year. I have brought a book or two to read through over the holidays so that I can hit the ground running, but aside from that, I think I might just kick back and enjoy the holidays. I shall be back in the maths department on around the 12th January, so expect the diary to get back in to the swing... {>>}

>> 18.12.03

Prime number calculator
In much the same way as everyone in the entire world gradually slows down to a dead-stop when Christmas comes around, so this last week has proved to be as unproductive as I said it would be, not least because of the nonsense the School of Electronics and Physical Sciences (SEPS) has had me do over the last couple of days (SEPS being the school in which the maths department belongs). Rejoice, however, reader, for there are two things that make this all that little bit more bearable (and that's... {>>}

>> 16.12.03

Positively useless
It's going to be a bit of a moan, so the one positive thing about the day might as well be dealt with so that I can really get in to my stride: the presentations that I spoke about yesterday didn't last the three hours they were supposed to; hence, I was fortunately sitting at my desk by 10:30am, cup of tea in hand, happily reading the news on the BBC. Unfortunately, nothing else good can be said about today. First of all, having risen out of bed at 07:25,... {>>}

>> 15.12.03

Christmas holidays
The final week before the university closes down for christmas looks like it's going to be one of those in which very little gets achieved. As ever, there are the rounds of social activities, including at least two leaving parties and the maths christmas dinner on Thursday; it is in terms of work, however, that the week will prove to be frustrating and — much as it pains me to keep going on about it — it's the research skills lectures (which I've talked about at great length, here, there... {>>}

>> 13.12.03

A good meeting
Having written about having a meeting every day, little else has been written in this diary about something that is really quite rare at the level of PhD. In truth, I don't think it is worth expanding upon because the meeting is one of the things (like most of them, actually) that are determined by the supervisor. Thus, me writing about the merits of daily meetings might be of no assitance whatsoever to someone that meets their supervisor weekly and might serve only to aggravate a student that already thinks... {>>}

>> 12.12.03

Another early morning
Once again, I found myself in the "office" a good half an hour before 9am, which signals an interesting change in my approach to my work. Having arrived early previously this week and had a good day, I decided to try and give it another go today. The reason is partly to do with another turn at being an exam scribe this afternoon (which will be quite a nice, easy finish to the week) and partly to be able to give me a peaceful chunk of time in which to... {>>}

>> 11.12.03

Obviously, it's evident
Having spent a lot of time reading through papers on symmetry methods of late, I'm starting to feel a little out of my depth. It seems that the language of maths is really one that takes a while to acquire and - languages not being my strong point — I'm finding it a little difficult. The difficulties are a combination of many things: a lack of familiarity with the subject matter (it is new, after all), a lack of knowledge of some other fields of maths, an inability to spot... {>>}

>> 10.12.03

My first exam
As was mentioned quite recently, today saw me take part in my first exam in an official capacity, as opposed to a student capacity. It wasn't an occasion that you would normally associate with end of semester exams, which is to say a large hall with several different exams running concurently; instead, I was invigilating a single student in a room. As it turns out, I wasn't to just invigilate: I was also the scribe for the student, which was quite an interesting experience. Way back when in those hazy... {>>}

Catching worms
An early morning today means that things will either go well and my brain will be a hive of activity, or that things might not go so well and my brain will be a haze of inactivity. Since I will be invigilating in the early afternoon, the morning needs to be at least somehwat productive so that I can show my supervisor, Dr Peter Hydon, some of my work from the last couple of days. We did not have a meeting yesterday, which is somewhat of a luxury given that... {>>}

>> 09.12.03

Exam invigilation
The end of semester is upon undergraduates and as a result, exams are the order of the day for the department. As a research postgraduate, there are no exams at all for me, which is quite an interesting feeling, in that a wole semster of work can go untested: it's either in my head or it's not. Aside from the academic perspective of exams, the end of term (or in some cases end of holidays/start of term) presents postgraduates with another opportunity to earn some precious pennies, in the form... {>>}

>> 08.12.03

Types of degree
As with undergraduate studies, there are several flavours of postgraduate degrees. These split in to three main categories: taught programmes, research and practitioner doctorates. Below is a brief description of what each entails (taken from the University of Surrey postgraduate prospectus). Taught programmes: these are the most similar postgraduate courses to those a student experiences at an undergraduate level; programmes require entry requirements and take the form of modules split over two semesters. The main difference between an undergraduate course and taught postgraduate one is a major project, which aims... {>>}

The tea-lady
The tea-lady is normally that maternal type who always has a kind word for you in and around the work-place, pleasing everyone with her idiosyncracies and generally justifying her place on the pay-roll with tales of yesteryear and cups of tea. (Of course, a tea-lady could just well as be a tea-man, though I am yet to come across one doing it quite so successfully as their female counterpart.) In the maths department, we do not have a tea-lady but instead have a post-lady, and at some point down the... {>>}

>> 07.12.03

Overheard conversation
Sitting down to dinner recently in a restraurant after some successful Christmas shopping, I overheard a conversation between a graduand and his parents at the table next to us. As parents have a wont to do, they were asking their son what he was planning on doing now that the treadmill of standard higher education had come to an end. His options made for interesting eaves-dropping and though I doubt very much he actually knew what he wanted to do, going on to study for a postgraduate degree was certainly... {>>}

>> 05.12.03

The competition
Today was spent working through a paper that discusses initial value problems so that I could present the general gist of it to my supervisor, who wasn't familiar with the method the paper advocates. It was an enjoyable and challenging experience, one that both put in perspective where the research I am working on fits in with the symmetry scene and how to present an academic paper. Though I am attempting to write otherwise in this diary, my writing style is normally quite informal, with plenty of little comments here... {>>}

>> 04.12.03

Athens versus library services
In order to get back on track, the majority of the day has been spent searching for papers on initial value problems and their solution using symmetry methods. The main tool for this was MathSciNet, which proved to be both useful and frustrating in equal measure. The basic premise of MathSciNet is a very good one: perform a search for a required paper/author, choose the required paper and then download/print it. Easy enough. The difficulty arises when you are directed to the journal in which the paper appears: roughly half... {>>}

>> 02.12.03

Mad thoughts
The last day or two have seen me languishing in bed for the majority of the time with a sort of flu-type bug. Unlike great minds of yesteryear, my fever has resulted in exactly no breakthroughs, mainly because I haven't been able to turn my mind to such matters. Concentrating on getting back to sleep has, for the main part, been my greatest achievement. I did manage to get my marking for the week out of the way. The novelty has worn off now, but fortunately my speed and fluency... {>>}

>> 01.12.03

Who's who
As time slowly progresses, so the mathematicians associated with the area of symmetry methods become more familiar. To keep things ticking over here, below is a brief list of some of the people associated with symmetry methods and their application to differential equations (in no particular order): Peter Olver >> Peter Hydon >> Nail Ibragimov (who made the news in South Africa, no less, with symmetries) >> Peter Clarkson >> Liz Mansfield There is also a research centre that deals with Lie group analysis and it's applications to mathematics. Although... {>>}