Grant Keady

My permanent postal address is
School of Mathematics and Statistics,
University of Western Australia,
Nedlands/Crawley, 6009, Western Australia

This School is part of the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Email: keady@maths.uwa.edu.au
Fax: +61 8 6488 1028

Click here to see

• a list of my publications
• my curriculum vitae

Teaching at UWA

Undergraduate Teaching

• On-going.
  • I am organizing mapleTA questions for MATH1010 and MATH1020. (These replace the AiM questions used 2004-2007 inclusive.)
  • I have ongoing interests, and occasional maintenance duties, associated with
    • calmaeth (for MATH2040 and, perhaps for 2009?, for MATH2200)
    • moodle (for ENVE3605)
• My teaching tasks in 2nd semester 2008 will include the following.
  • I am to lecture MATH3342, 3M2 Complex Variable.
  • I will help the lecturers involved with
    • moodle for ENVE3605 Math Applications in Environmental Engineering
    • mapleTA for MATH1010 and MATH1020, ctd.
    • My Sem2 lecture (and other class) timetable is here.
• First semester 2009?
  • I will be sharing the lecturing of MATH2200, Applied Mathematics, with someone from Physics.
  • MATH2040.
    • I provided my Linear Systems materials to the lecturer who has taken over from me.
    • I'm happy to help with matlab and labs, etc. in the first couple of weeks (and, would, if it were needed help in labs at other times).
    • If I have any time, I would like to continue migrating my MATH2040 AiM questions into CalMaeth, augmenting my earlier CalMaeth questions there.

Honours and Postgraduate supervision

I specialize in helping others with mathematical software.

• In 2008, I'm assisting Alan Woods in the supervision of Daniel Hawtin on a project on the "numbers of solutions of systems of multivariate quadratic equations over finite fields". I'm assisting with the GAP programming items (and perhaps the GAP-Singular interface if that is appropriate). Notes are here.
• From mid 2006 I have been involved with an MSc project using matlab in modelling the heat in parked cars, and comparing this with experimental data. Nev Fowkes is the actual supervisor (except when away on leave when I take over). My role is to provide Matlab expertise.
  Unfortunately, I have less time to devote to this cause in 2008 than I had before.

Undergrad Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) underpinned by Computer Algebra
calmaeth, AiM, mapleTA and stack

CAA is usually for use in large classes, though experiments with new aspects are sometimes done with smaller classes.

I use any CAA system in the genre which is

• affordable
• underpinned by a Computer Algebra package that I already know
• preferably in use, or soon to be in use,
  • elsewhere in Australia
  • elsewhere in Perth (so, fitting in with Curtin, AiM for 2004-2008, mapleTA for 2009-) .

There are lots of CAA systems, so selection is needed.

• I prefer free, open-source systems. (AiM is free and open-source *except* for the maple underpinning it. However the commercial - maple - component, has been enough to disqualify AiM from use at UWA from 2008, as the maple vendor has increased the price to stop its use.)
• I prefer systems which are used at several universities worldwide (e.g. AiM, mapleTA) where there is active sharing of question databases (better in mapleTA), and where there is active work at integrating the systems with the Managed Learning Environments used at UWA (and Curtin) (moodle and WebCT).

However one can't always get what one prefers.

I quite like writing my own questions, provided that I believe they will get continuing use. I prefer working with others,

• Kevin Judd (UWA) for calmaeth work
• people at Curtin for AiM and, hopefully, from 2009 mapleTA
• colleagues at UNSW, etc. for mapleTA

Some history of my authoring efforts since 2000 is given in my CAA directory.
I'm also prepared to supervise undergrads (appropriately funded from elsewhere) on projects in this area, e.g. AMSI ICEEM Summer Studentships.

Honours teaching

My interests in Hons teaching for 2008 include the following:

• Concerning Hons Projects I might be prepared to supervise, see the list of Hons Project titles offered by me.
• I'm the academic coordinator at UWA Maths for the national offerings via Access Grid Rooms

Mathematical Software interests

To access materials, in the systems with which I am currently most involved, click below

• CAS (='Computer Algebra System')
  • Maple (and its use under AiM and mapleTA)
  • Mathematica (and its use under calmaeth)
  • free open-source CAS
    • maxima (and it use under stack)
    • AXIOM/aldor
    • GAP
  • ObjectOrientation and AlgebraicStructure:
    • AXIOM
    • MuPAD
• Matlab . I use Matlab and Octave (a free, good package similar to Matlab) for numeric work. Matlab's Symbolic Toolbox (as in Student Matlab) is adequate for CAS needs of the vast majority of engineering students.

Research interests

More details on this topic, with some admin. matters is here. A summary of some of the main headings for my research interests follows.

• Differential equations, esp. applications of semilinear elliptic second-order pde in fluid mechanics and engineering applications;
  
• Convex optimization problems, esp. involving order properties, such as minimizing convex V with property
  V(max(x,y)) + V(min(x,y)) <= V(x) + V(y) ;
  
• Mathematical software of use to engineers, Matlab; Maple and Mathematica, etc.; symbolic-numeric interface matters. For links, see preceding section.

Miscellaneous

• My admin. jobs in recent years. These include:
  • I am on the committee of the WA branch of ANZIAM.
• Books I have loaned
• local software help pages: newsite
  oldsite , oldsite/tex/doc
• Maths and Information Science Discipline Group
  old pages of Maths and Information Science Discipline Group
• UWA library
• www.ams.org, e-math.ams.org (Latter seems to be better.)
• wikipedia, maths; mathworld
• Cao Ly's local links
• UWA CWIS HTML-validation links, validator.cwis.uwa.edu.au,
  or if this is too slow, try w3c, http://validator.w3.org/
  MathML test

Authorship statement

If the location field of your browser screen begins

http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~keady/

then (a determined attempt has been made to ensure that) the author of materials is G.Keady unless explicit statements to the contrary are given.

This page maintained by keady@maths.uwa.edu.au . Last modified 08.

Except for one use of center.