Relearning Professionalism: From High School Teacher to University Professor

In this narrative response to stories from the field, the author chronicles her transition from high school teacher to university professor. The transition was marked by a dissonance about what it means to be a professional in each setting. The author shares several lessons learned about the autonomy in higher education, which was at first daunting, and later a relief in her new environment

Two models in the world of Métis fiddling : John Arcand and Andy DeJarlis

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Growth of generating sets for direct powers of classical algebraic structures

For an algebraic structure A denote by d(A) the smallest size of a generating set for A, and let d(A)=(d(A),d(A2),d(A3),…), where An denotes a direct power of A. In this paper we investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the sequence d(A) when A is one of the classical structures—a group, ring, module, algebra or Lie algebra. We show that if A is finite then d(A) grows either linearly or logarithmically. In the infinite case constant growth becomes another possibility; in particular, if A is an infinite simple structure belonging to one of the above classes then d(A) is eventually constant. Where appropriate we frame our exposition within the general theory of congruence permutable varieties.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Tensors, !-graphs, and non-commutative quantum structures

Categorical quantum mechanics (CQM) and the theory of quantum groups rely heavily on the use of structures that have both an algebraic and co-algebraic component, making them well-suited for manipulation using diagrammatic techniques. Diagrams allow us to easily form complex compositions of (co)algebraic structures, and prove their equality via graph rewriting. One of the biggest challenges in going beyond simple rewriting-based proofs is designing a graphical language that is expressive enough to prove interesting properties (e.g. normal form results) about not just single diagrams, but entire families of diagrams. One candidate is the language of !-graphs, which consist of graphs with certain subgraphs marked with boxes (called !-boxes) that can be repeated any number of times. New !-graph equations can then be proved using a powerful technique called !-box induction. However, previously this technique only applied to commutative (or cocommutative) algebraic structures, severely limiting its applications in some parts of CQM and (especially) quantum groups. In this paper, we fix this shortcoming by offering a new semantics for non-commutative !-graphs using an enriched version of Penrose's abstract tensor notation.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2014, arXiv:1412.810

A first-order logic for string diagrams

Equational reasoning with string diagrams provides an intuitive means of proving equations between morphisms in a symmetric monoidal category. This can be extended to proofs of infinite families of equations using a simple graphical syntax called !-box notation. While this does greatly increase the proving power of string diagrams, previous attempts to go beyond equational reasoning have been largely ad hoc, owing to the lack of a suitable logical framework for diagrammatic proofs involving !-boxes. In this paper, we extend equational reasoning with !-boxes to a fully-fledged first order logic called with conjunction, implication, and universal quantification over !-boxes. This logic, called !L, is then rich enough to properly formalise an induction principle for !-boxes. We then build a standard model for !L and give an example proof of a theorem for non-commutative bialgebras using !L, which is unobtainable by equational reasoning alone.Comment: 15 pages + appendi