A History of the Master in the Teaching of Mathematics (MTM) Program 1967 – 2018

The MTM – Master in the Teaching of Mathematics – program has been the oldest graduate program in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Concordia University, established in 1967, when Concordia was still the Sir George Williams University. Very quickly, however, the Department developed a Master of Science/Master of Arts in Mathematics program and, later, a PhD program in Mathematics. MTM survived about 50 years, until 2016 when admissions to the program were suspended, or until 2019 when the last MTM student graduated. In this document, we describe the program, its mission, degree requirements and courses. We present the context of the program’s creation in 1967 and the reasons for its suspension 50 years later. We present also the people – faculty and students – who made the program what it was: a lively space for critical reflection on mathematics education research and practice, always open to trying novel approaches to teaching mathematics. The tradition of critical reflection and trying different approaches to teaching mathematics has a chance to survive in the department after the suspension of the MTM program; MSc/MA students have the option of doing their research in the area of mathematics education. The purpose of writing this historical piece is to keep the memory of the MTM program at Concordia alive, and to create an easily accessible reference for graduates of the program when they apply for jobs or further graduate studies. The document has been written by the last director of the MTM program, Anna Sierpinska, with editorial help of her former student, Carol Beddard, an MTM 2012 graduate

Three Contributions to the Theory and Practice of Optimizing Compilers

The theory and practice of optimizing compilers gather techniques that, from input computer programs, aim at generating code making the best use of modern computer hardware. On the theory side, this thesis contributes new results and algorithms in polyhedral geometry. On the practical side, this thesis contributes techniques for the tuning of parameters of programs targeting GPUs. We detailed these two fronts of our work below. Consider a convex polyhedral set P given by a system of linear inequalities A*x \u3c= b, where A is an integer matrix and b is an integer vector. We are interested in the integer hull PI of P which is the smallest convex polyhedral set that contains all the integer points in P. In Chapter 3 we discuss our findings on the pseudo-periodicity of the vertices of PI when the input vector b is parametric, that is, the coordinates b1, . . . , bm of b are treated as parameters while the coefficients of A have fixed values. We observe that the number of vertices of PI has a pseudo-period Ti w.r.t each bi. This result and its proof lead us to propose a new algorithm for computing the integer hull of a rational convex polyhedral set, see Chapter 4. We have implemented in the C programming language our algorithm for the case of polyhedral sets in dimensions 2 and 3. We have also realized a Maple implementation of our algorithm for polyhedral sets of arbitrary dimensions. Our experimental results show that our algorithm computes integer hulls efficiently and can deal with polyhedral sets with large numbers of integer points. On another front, we present KLARAPTOR (Kernel LAunch parameters RAtional Program estimaTOR), a freely available tool built on top of the LLVM Pass Framework and NVIDIA CUPTI API to dynamically determine the optimal values of launch parameters of a CUDA kernel. We describe a technique that, for a CUDA kernel, builds at compile-time, a so-called rational program. This rational program, based on some performance prediction model, and knowing particular data and hardware parameters at runtime, can be executed to automatically and dynamically determine the values of launch parameters, for the CUDA kernel, which will yield nearly optimal performance

Computer Science for Continuous Data:Survey, Vision, Theory, and Practice of a Computer Analysis System

Building on George Boole's work, Logic provides a rigorous foundation for the powerful tools in Computer Science that underlie nowadays ubiquitous processing of discrete data, such as strings or graphs. Concerning continuous data, already Alan Turing had applied "his" machines to formalize and study the processing of real numbers: an aspect of his oeuvre that we transform from theory to practice.The present essay surveys the state of the art and envisions the future of Computer Science for continuous data: natively, beyond brute-force discretization, based on and guided by and extending classical discrete Computer Science, as bridge between Pure and Applied Mathematics

2020, UMaine News Press Releases

This is a catalog of press releases put out by the University of Maine Division of Marketing and Communications between January 2, 2020 and December 15, 2020

Q(sqrt(-3))-Integral Points on a Mordell Curve

We use an extension of quadratic Chabauty to number fields,recently developed by the author with Balakrishnan, Besser and M ̈uller,combined with a sieving technique, to determine the integral points overQ(√−3) on the Mordell curve y2 = x3 − 4

A Samaritan State Revisited

Canada’s foreign aid programs are an area of ongoing interest, yet there is little knowledge of Canada’s 70-year aid history, the historic forces that have shaped Canadian aid policy, and the many complex factors that affect Canada’s future foreign aid policy. A Samaritan State Revisited brings together a refreshing group of emerging and leading scholars to reflect on the history of Canada’s overseas development aid. Addressing the broad ideological and institutional origins of Canada’s official development assistance in the 1950s and specific themes in its evolution and professionalization since the 1960s, this collection is the first to explore Canada’s history with foreign aid with this level of interrogative detail. Extending from the 1950s to the present and covering Canadian aid to all regions of the Global South, from South and Southeast Asia to Latin America and Africa, these essays embrace a variety of approaches and methodologies ranging from traditional, archival-based research to textual and image analysis, oral history, and administrative studies. A Samaritan State Revisited weaves together a unique synthesis of governmental and non-governmental perspectives, providing a clear and readily accessible explanation of the forces that have shaped Canadian foreign aid polic

\u27Gave His Life for the Empire\u27: Memory, Memorials, and Identity in the British Empire after the First World War

This dissertation examines the construction of personal memorials after the First World War across the British Empire nations of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, to understand how individuals sought to make their own memorial to remember their loved one killed in the conflict. In comparison to other studies on the construction of national or other community memorials, this dissertation explores how individuals accepted or rejected dominant discourses in creating their own memorials that spoke to how they remembered the war. It is based on a large database of more than 2,000 private memorials to individuals that were erected in the nations being examined. National registries of war memorials created by museums, archives, and government agencies were mined to create the database. The construction of personal memorials also revealed cultural influences that impacted the design of the memorials. The Empire governments’ decision to create and support the Imperial War Graves Commission that refused to repatriate the bodies and regulated the design of cemeteries and headstones, encouraged individuals to find their own ways of commemorating the war dead to meet their needs. The role of mourning and religion in commemoration reveals that these personal memorials were designed to function as sites for mourning at home and therefore fulfilled the necessary need of a grave site that was inaccessible. In examining the design, language, and messages of personal memorials, we are able to see that rather than reject the messages of the state about the war, individuals used them to make sense of death of family and friends as a way to give their deaths some meaning. Using the Victorian mourning concept of the ‘good death,’ personal memorials strove to project the image that the soldiers died a good death in religious and secular terms in the use of religious symbols, literary quotations, and nationalist language. Drawing from the Anglican Church, British poets, and imperialist ideology, personal memorials reflected the dominance of British worldviews on commemoration and remembrance of the First World War

Cancer, Research, and Educational Film at Midcentury

In 1949 the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare (DNHW) commissioned a film, eventually called Challenge. Science Against Cancer, as part of a major effort to recruit young scientists into cancer research. Both organizations feared that poor recruitment would stifle the development of the field at a time when funding for research was growing dramatically. The fear was that there would not be enough new young scientists to meet the demand, and that the shortfall would undermine cancer research and the hopes invested in it. Challenge aimed to persuade young scientists to think of cancer research as a career. This book is the story of that forgotten film and what it tells us about mid-twentieth century American and Canadian cancer research, educational filmmaking, and health education campaigns. It explores why Canadian and American health agencies turned to film to address the problem of scientist recruitment; how filmmakers turned such recruitment concerns into something they thought would work as a film; and how information officers at the NCI and DNHW sought to shape the impact of Challenge by embedding it in a broader educational and propaganda program. It is, in short, an account of the important, but hitherto undocumented, roles of filmmakers and information officers in the promotion of post-Second World War cancer research