Creativity is intelligence
During my studies in mathematics, I never thought about how I should practice or learn mathematics. Have you ever thought about this? I was learning formulas, theorems, proofs, and various other results by hard and applying them in new situations. Now I realize I could have approached it differently.
A mathematical journey to Suriname
From February 26th until March 1st, we had the unique opportunity to visit the Anton de Kom University in Suriname. The goal of our visit was to assess possibilities for cooperation between our mathematics institute and the math department in Paramaribo.
How do I teach?
Last week I had the honour to receive an award from the Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA) for my contributions in teaching in the BSc in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. I thought of many things during this time, and I wanted to write some thoughts down.
We shouldn’t give classroom lectures anymore
In the September issue of the Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde mathematician Nelly Litvak wrote the first article in her column ‘Better than blackboard’!
Let me tell you a story from my teaching
On Wednesday I was teaching an exercise class on graph theory. There was this one exercise that was troubling me for a couple of days, I couldn't solve it and it was frustrating.
My experience of teaching math in Africa
In the past few years, I have been involved in several projects concerning mathematical education in Africa.
I was advised that a good place to start, if I wanted to explore the African mathematical landscape, was AIMS. That’s the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, or the African Institute for Minimising Sleep, as the students I met liked to call it when they were overwhelmed by assignments.
Finding Euler. A mathematics story from Ghana
It is Thursday 25 of July, the clock shows 22:00, my flight with KLM lands at the international airport of Accra, the capital of Ghana. I exit from the arrivals hall of the airport and I start looking around, I see a board with my name on it, it is Francis, the director of AMI Ghana and one of the organizers of the Allotey mathematics summer school. This is how a wonderful adventure started.