Newsletter 3 August, 2010
The Klein Project #3
August, 2010
The main activities in the Klein Project since the last Newsletter in April this year have been three more Klein meetings.
The second Klein Conference was held in Castro-Urdales, Spain, in the first week of June. Papers, presentations and discussion can be read at the conference website. A meeting was also held in Oxford, England, in mid-June, attended by about thirty mathematicians and mathematics educators.
Yuriko Baldin has established "Projeto Klein em Língua Portuguesa" which had its first meeting of about forty people in July in Belo Horizonte (see Klein website for a report). The themes were Numbers and Functions. The second meeting will be in João Pessoa in mid-October, with the themes Arithmetic and Algebra. This project has four-year funding from the Brazilian government.
In the next week at the American Mathematical Society joint meeting with the Mathematics Association of America in Pittsburg, an Invited Paper session on the Klein Project will be led by William McCallum. Each of the talks will become a “Vignette”---see below.
These meetings have led to further developments in the output of the project. It has been decided to contract out each of the mathematical chapters to groups of mathematicians in that area who are recognised internationally as being able to represent that field. They will liaise with a Design Group member and work with someone who will help to ensure that the chapter “speaks to” mathematics teachers. The result will be internationally reviewed.
It has also been decided that each chapter will be about 15 pages but with another 15 pages of “Klein Vignettes”. These will be short snapshots of individual mathematical examples, proofs, ideas, or applications that exemplify an important mathematical concept. We are inviting everybody to contribute these Vignettes on the website—--a large (and ever-growing) collection will be maintained there, although only some will be chosen to be part of the book. If you wish to contribute, please read the criteria for Vignettes—--in particular note that they must be accessible by teachers, have a mathematical “point”, and be short. We have some sample Vignettes on the website.
The authorship of the three cross-disciplinary chapters has not been decided, except that we are planning to obtain many contributions from leading mathematicians for the chapter on “How Mathematicians Work”. Contributions will be able to be made on the website or directly to the Design Group.
Other types of contributions are also welcomed. The website has a category for “Recommended Reading” and for “Related Links”. You are welcome to add items to these lists. Please include a sentence or two about the item.
The Design Group would like to hear from anyone, or any organisation, that is interested in hosting a Klein conference or workshop. We now have this Newsletter available in six languages. If anyone wishes to add further languages, that will be appreciated.
