Edwin O'Shea

What you the student should expect from a class with me:

In teaching mathematics I rely mostly on a sincere enthusiasm and curiosity for my subject and an appreciation for the difficulty, and in some cases the anxiety, that students can experience when encountering new mathematics. I place a strong emphasis on the incorporation of my students' ideas in the classroom, viewing class discussion as not only a way of engaging the student but as a means of continuous feedback on the ideas that the students are and are not grasping. When possible, I have the students work in groups in order to provide them with a sense of mathematical self-sufficiency. I favour having a strong continuous assessment component since it helps students keep up with the material and, like class discussion, provides me with a concrete sense of the extent with which material is being comprehended. I respect my students by placing high standards on them, having confidence that they can grapple with and come to understand both the power of mathematical language in attacking problems and the need for mathematical rigour, and by doing everything I can (within reason) to help them achieve a mastery of a given course's themes.

Homework and standards:

This is a set of guidelines for beginning mathematics students on things to keep in mind when writing mathematics. And an insightful, modern-culture-type article on enforcing standards of taste and judgement

Some recent courses:

• Masters class in Triangulations of point configurations (at NUI Galway).
• Final Year Projects (at NUI Galway).
• Masters class in Computational Algebra (in pidgeon spanish at CINVESTAV).
• Masters class in Polytopes (in pidgeon spanish at CINVESTAV).
• Second year class in Linear Algebra (at University of Kentucky).