Online University

Hello and welcome.

It is now more than two months since lockdown started. Time for an update!

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Following up the last update: my online talk at The Archimedeans was successfully held in MS Teams. It is now available on YouTube.

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Online University

At the end of April, our final term started, fully online. The transition to online teaching has been mostly successful. For us, third-year maths students, this term consists only of revision, so I don’t have any lectures. I still have supervisions, but the rest of the workload is individual study.

Teaching maths online is a challenge, because students need to watch it being written live. Of course, 21st-century technologies help. The quality of my supervisions has varied a lot from supervisor to supervisor. (This also used to happen normally…)  I’ve had supervisions in four different platforms so far: Skype, Zoom, Jitsi, and MS Teams. The platform doesn’t seem to alter the quality a lot. The key factor is how maths is shown. The best way is to share the screen of a tablet (in a note-taking app) through the platform. I have another supervisor which, with a second camera, films what he writes on paper. Some also write annotations in the PC, editing a pdf.

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Still in full lock-down in Madrid…

Spain is starting to gradually lift lock-down restrictions.

Two weeks ago, we were finally allowed to go outside, for a walk or to exercise. This only, however, during designated time slots (6-10 am or 8-11pm for adults).

Half of Spain went into ‘Phase 1’ last Monday. This lets people move inside their region, and eat outdoors in restaurants. Cars can have more than one occupant. Family and friend visits of up to 10 people are allowed.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, I live in the other half. Still in Phase 0.

This half, where I live, requested to go into Phase 1 from Monday (tomorrow).  The health department accepted the request, except for Madrid and Barcelona. Oh, I live in Madrid, what a shame. Madrid and BCN will enter the newly invented Phase 0.5 on Monday. Which is about the same as Phase 0. (If rational numbers are now allowed, are irrational numbers next? Phase pi/4 ?)

The decisions are based on both qualitative and quantitative evidence of the ability of the region to cope with a new peak of cases. Madrid has been the worst affected region of the country by the outbreak. A statistical study run in the whole of the country shows that immunity levels are 5% country-wide, but up to 11% in Madrid. This means that there have been (and probably still are) more than twice as many cases per habitant here than in the rest of Spain. These percentages seem to leave us very far from herd-immunity yet with many infections (do the maths: about 6.5 million people live just in Madrid’s metropolitan area).

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Anyways, let’s just hope things keep improving.

My highlight of the week: I was a panellist in a session for high school students considering applying to study maths at Cambridge. It was held in Zoom. We did a virtual tour of my college. We then answered questions about our life as maths students, the application process…

I should also say that I miss being living at university. I miss the people. But let’s try to stay positive and get the most out of this period.

I leave you with Newton…