Written and Oral Presentation (Spring 2018)
MATH-GA.2840-004, 3 Points, Wednesdays 11:00-12:50PM,
1302
Warren Weaver Hall
Co-instructors:
Aleksandar
Donev and
Mutiara
Sondjaja
Webpage(s)
In addition to this page, where we will post lecture notes and links to
external material, we will use Piazza for communication and to
quickly give feedback to each other on various samples of writing.
piazza.com/nyu/spring2018/mathga2840004
Description
This course will provide graduate students preparing for teaching and
research careers with several skills and tools for more effective
professional oral and written presentation. It will also provide a platform
for supervised teaching practice. Students from all fields of mathematics
are welcome, both pure and applied. The first part of the course, taught
primarily by Prof. Mutiara Sondjaja, will focus on teaching pedagogy and
effective class management. The second part of the course, co-taught with
Prof. Aleks Donev, will focus on scientific writing, from abstracts to
complete papers. Students will practice both by writing a review article or
lecture notes on a topic from their field of study, aimed at their peers and
not at specialists. They will deliver lectures to the class on the chosen
topic and get feedback from the instructors and other students. The use of
LaTex or tools based on LaTex such as LyX or sharelatex/Overleaf will be
strongly encouraged. We will also have some guest lectures from professional
writers and career service professionals, and will provide, as time permits,
help with basic job search skills like writing CVs, teaching and research
statements, and cover letters. Students will be encouraged to help each
other and learn from peers.
Textbooks
- "Handbook
of writing for the mathematical sciences" by Nicholas J Higham,
published by SIAM, any edition, strongly recommended.
- "Stylish
Academic Writing" by Helen Sword (available to NYU members in electronic format free
of charge),
- "The
Elements of Style" by Strunk and White, which we recommend for
non-native speakers, or those wishing to refresh their English writing
skills. It is available free
in electronic form at a number of online locations (use google).
Tools
Each of you will be required to write a set of "lecture notes" in LaTex. It
is essential that you setup a working LaTex
environment (for OS X use MACTex
and consider installing homebrew) on the
computing system you wish to use for this course (the Linux-based CIMS
networked computers have everything you need and more). First-time LaTex
users (but also others!) should consider using the WYSIWYG Latex frontend /
word processor LyX to start. Students
that prefer to work directly with LaTex should take a look at some
latex-specific editors, such as the free and portable TeXMaker
(installed on Courant's linux network). More experienced users could use a
programming editor that is latex-aware, such as atom-latex
or LaTeXTools-sublime.
If you want to make presentations in PowerPoint or keynote and include
equations, try LatexIt
(comes with MACTex on OS X systems).
To co-edit and comment on this as a group, we will use Overleaf,
and/or maybe github+TeX editor of choice.
Student Papers
During the Spring of 2018, nine graduate students worked on practice papers
on a topic of their choice. Here are a few of those papers:
Lecture Notes
Writing a talk is covered in Chapter 9 in the textbook by Higham. Also
look at these tips on the David
Attenborough style of scientific presentation from Will Ratcliff.
Watch it in action in this 5-minute
lecture from Ratcliff.
Examples/assignments:
- A short video lesson "How
Big is Infinity?" by TedEd.
- A lecture on TED on the "Mathematics
of origami. Watch on your own and comment on Piazza.
- A mathematical conference lecture on a very technical topic of Operads
(algebraic geometry).
- A 5 minute talk
on the rise of multicellular life related to the David
Attenborough style. Comment on Piazza.
Elevator statements are discussed on page 154 in Chapter 13 (The Big
Picture) of the book Stylish Academic Writing. Here is what Sword has to say
about it:
"Condensing a complex research project into a pithy abstract is no simple
task, to be sure. An even greater challenge is to boil that abstract down
into an “elevator statement”: the seemingly off-the-cuff but in fact
brilliantly polished single-sentence sum- mary that you offer to the
colleague who turns to you in the elevator at an academic conference and
asks, “So what are you working on?” You have just a minute or two to
respond: the time that it takes for the elevator to arrive at its
destination floor...The secret ingredient of an effective elevator
statement—or, for that matter, of a persuasive abstract, article, or book—is
a strong thesis or argument. Both words are frequently heard in the freshman
composition classroom but seldom in the research laboratory. However,
identical principles apply in both venues: writers who put forth a bold,
defensible claim are much more likely to generate engaging, persuasive prose
than those who of- fer bland statements of fact with which no one could
possibly disagree. In the sciences and social sciences, a strong thesis fol-
lows naturally from a compelling research question..."
Homework: Prepare a 2-3min elevator talk. Choose your topic (e.g., your
own research, field of math) and audience. Try one more specialized and
one less specialized audience (e.g., a colleague and a neighbor). Present
in class and put it on Piazza for comment.
Take a look at Bloom's
taxonomy interpreted for Mathematics by Lindsey Shorser, and "What
Does Active Learning Mean For Mathematicians?" by Braun et al.
Gain inspiration for teaching from the book The
Joy of Teaching by Peter Filene (available to you in PDF
format).
Think about the advantages and disadvantages of using slides versus a
blackboard, for lectures/seminars/talks, within your field of
mathematics.
We will also conduct micro-teaching (15min per group) exercises. Each
group will give a 15 minute lecture on one of these topics:
- Topic: Limits (non-rigorous introduction)
Audience: Calculus 1 students (undergraduates, first-year, a mix of
non-majors)
- Topic: Limits (rigorous definition)
Audience: Intro to Math Analysis students (undergraduates, juniors,
mostly math majors)
- Topic: Introduction to rigorous proofs, with focus on introducing
proof by induction
Audience: Students taking something like Discrete Math (undergraduates,
sophomores, math/CS/education majors)
We will discuss computer tools for
mathematical writing in class but see Tools
above for links. Also get the AMS
Short Math Guide for LaTex.
(2/21) Guest workshop on academic writing
Robert Diyanni and Anton Borst from the NYU
Center for the Advancement of Teaching will give a guest
workshop on academic writing. The center is available to you for
assistance with writing or presenting. They also offer engaging and
effective workshops that you should consider attending.
(2/28) First student presentation on the topic of the "Fast
Multipole Method" (see draft on Overleaf).
We will begin going through some fundamentals of good scientific writing,
starting from the structure of a paper. We will use the following two
review articles as examples:
- The Introduction and Outlook of an article by Prof. Miranda
Holmes-Cerfon on "Sticky-sphere
clusters."
- First two pages of this "Introduction
to Regularity Structures" by Martin Hairer. Observe the structure
of the introduction and what different paragraphs do, and write down
some notes.
- First two pages of the complete article "A
theory of regularity structures" by Martin Hairier, published in Invent. Math.
2014 (Hairer won the Fields Medal for this work). Also take a look
at the structure of the article and Section 1 in particular and take
some notes of what you notice.
- Look at the section headings / table of contents in this preprint
on Langevin simulations.
(3/7) Student presentation on "Optimal experimental design for
Bayesian inverse problems" (see draft on Overleaf).
(3/14) Spring break!
(3/21) Snow day!
(3/28) Student presentation on "Wave-Vortex Decomposition of
one-dimensional track data" (see draft on Overleaf)
We will discuss some simple tips to improve your writing style / English
usage.
(4/4) Student presentation on "Polar Amplification and Heat Fluxes
in the Atmosphere" (see draft on Overleaf)
(4/11) Student presentation on "The Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Method" (see draft on Overleaf)
(4/18) Student presentation on "Reinforcement Learning" (see
draft on Overleaf)
(4/25) Student presentation on "Mathematical theory for Go
endgames" (see draft on Overleaf)