The School of Mathematics and Physics offers units for students specialising in mathematics or intending to use mathematics in other areas. Units are designed to enable students to apply mathematics to other disciplines in the physical and biological sciences, commerce, economics and engineering.
Most first year units require TCE Mathematics MTM315109 as a pre-requisite, although some require either TCE Mathematics MTM315109 or MTS315109. The School provides a Mathematics Foundation Unit KMA003 for those students not having the pre-requisite MTM315109.
Some of the employment opportunities of mathematics graduates are in the following fields:
Australian Mathematical Society
The Australian Society for Operations Research
Statistical Society of Australia Inc.
ANZIAM
The School offers Honours in Mathematics and Physics. In each discipline, this is an independent fourth year that gives the students an the opportunity to pursue independent studies in an advanced topic.
In Mathematics, the Honours program consists of six units (60%) plus an honours thesis (40%).
The thesis is expected to contain a substantial review of a particular subject area, along with the student’s own research and experimentation in the field. The thesis is not normally expected to contain genuinely original research, although publishable material occasionally results from an honours thesis.
Students who are suitably qualified in mathematics but do not have a BSc may enrol for a Garduate Diploma with Honours.
Units are offered in pure and applied mathematics and statistics. Mathematics is rapidly becoming the technical language of the physical and biological sciences, and so units in mathematics underpin the theoretical study of aspects of the theme areas.
The statistics unit KMA153 Data Handling & Statistics – is vital to any area of study that involves the collection and analysis of data, which includes the four theme areas. Second and third year units in statistics continue this study.
KMA252 Calculus and Applications 2, KMA350 Computational Techniques 3 and KMA354 Partial Differential Equations, Applications and Methods 3 provide the setting for work in oceanography and meteorology studied in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies theme area. Differential equations, such as studied in the unit KMA154 Calculus and Applications 1B, are vital to the understanding of the growth and decay of populations, which relates to the theme area in Population and Community Studies.
In Hobart, the School is located in the Mathematics/Physics buiilding situated on Clarke Road within the Sandy Bay Campus. It has access to two computing laboratories in the Mathematics/Physics building, each of which contains approximately 20 PC's.
One of the computer laboratories contains approx (20) PCs and the other laboratory is a PC lab, containing 22 computers. These machines are maintained and updated regularly by the School’s computing officer.
The physics labs are used for practical work in units taught for each of the three undergraduate years, and allow students to undertake experiments in a broad range of areas of physics, in addition to providing basic training in measurement techniques and analysis.
Research facilities in the Mathematics Discipline on the Hobart Campus are good. The School has good computing facilities, with a central SUN ULTRA1 Unix machine acting as a server to a PC on each staff member's desk.
The School of Mathematics and Physics operates a range of research facilities including an 1.3m optical telescope at Bisdee Tier and four radio astronomy observatories near Hobart (TAS), Ceduna (SA), Yaragadee (WA) and Katherine (NT). Researchers in the school have access to a range of modern computing facilites, both on desktops and supercomputing platforms and are active participants in a wide range of research collaborations both nationally and internationally.
The School offers a Mathematics Foundation Program during Jan-Feb and Jun-Jul of each year.
This program is offered to students who are planning to enrol in a first year unit in commerce, computing or science at the University that requires a mathematics pre-requisite and to other students who may be interested in the program.
The School of Mathematics and Physics offers a comprehensive suite of undergraduate units in Mathematics and Physics on the Hobart Campus. It is possible for undergraduate students to take a major in Mathematics and a major in physics or a double major in Mathematics.
The School has an agreement with the School of Engineering, with Mathematics units in the first, second and third years of the Engineering program.
Another major teaching activity in the School is the provision of statistics units. The main statistics unit is the subject KMA153 (Data Handling and Statistics 1), which is offered on both campuses. It is the flagship flexible unit for statistics, and is taught in a modularised project-based mode. It attracts students from a wide variety of backgrounds, including the physical and biological sciences, medicine and pharmacy. Statistics continues to grow in importance and relevance to a wide variety of professions.
Physics in Hobart offers a first-year astronomy subject KYA181 (Astronomy 1) as a unit in the first semester of first year and is taught in a flexible mode. In addition, Physics teaches a first-year subject to students in Agriculture.
The School of Mathematics & Physics offers four programs of study leading to the Graduate Diploma of Science, specialising in Operations Research, Statistical Applications, Computational Mathematics and Physics. The specialisations are intended to meet needs for professional development.
RHD students are supervised in all three disciplines
In Mathematics, students receive supervision in pure mathematics, applied statistics, applied and numerical mathematics (including medical imaging and fluid mechanics).
Students in Physics are working in astronomy, theoretical physics and plasma physics.
The Mount Pleasant Observatory is located 20 km East of Hobart. The Observatory is equipped with two antennas, a 26 m and a 14 m which are both prime focus instruments. The 26m antenna was donated to the University by NASA in 1985 in recognition of the outstanding contributions to the field.
The Ceduna observatory is located 30 km north of Ceduna in South Australia. The observatory has a 30m diameter tertiary focus antenna, which were donated to the University by Telstra in 1995, demonstrating the world-class reputation of the radio astronomy research group.
Authorised by the Head of School, Mathematics & Physics
6 June, 2012
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