L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 19 to 24 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 13 to 18 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

L'articolo An Advent Calendar for Developers: day 7 to 12 sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

I am proud to say one of the speakers was my advisor and inverse problems researcher Prof. Samuli Siltanen. His talk was titled "How to defuse a photobomb" and showed some mathematical techniques for image enhancement and manipulation, in particular inpainting. Samuli was claimed winner at the end! You can enjoy his talk right here:

You can browse a photogallery of the event at this link.

It was great to see a mathematics talk winning the hearts of the audience. Congratulations, Samuli!

L'articolo Science Slam Helsinki 2015: a triumph for Inverse Problems sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Kirsi is a force of nature, as the picture she chose for the poster gives away. Her research is mostly in the area of differential geometry, but she goes beyond pure mathematics research. Last year she pioneered an interdisciplinary course at Aalto University about Mathematics, Art and Architecture, that was concluded by a final exhibition of "math-art masterpieces". She is passionate about teaching and never stops searching new ways to improve. You can read her recent interview on Kumpula Women blog, to have a taste of her views before the talk.

Only in the few years I spent here, I met amazing women working in science. Maybe I was lucky in my encounters, but I less frequently find the same passion and enthusiasm in men, as I found in many women here. I think of Johanna, who works so hard to improve mathematics teaching at any level; Anne-Maria, who has always been busy with research, training students for Math Olympiads and writing for the magazine Solmu; there's Martina, who's completing her postgrad studies and is a mother of three; Åsa, who does research with one hand and coordinates a doctoral school with the other; Hanne, on whom you can always count to get things done and well. I could go on for hours and these are only few of the amazing women I met at my math department (I apologise to all those who did not appear on the list: it was a brainstorming!).

Maybe I notice their achievements better because I feel I can relate to them, but I really need to feel this connection in my daily life. It gives me great courage to look at these close-by women and see that they are making it. At the same time, I have the privilege of talking plainly with some of them and of learning their difficulties and how they overcome them, another precious contribution.

In the spirit of sharing this opportunities with other girls who are in need of role models to relate better to, I started this series of seminars. Contents will be scientific (no policy making this time!), but accessible to undergrad students. Let's highlight women's contribution to Finnish mathematics!

L'articolo Women in Mathematics in Finland: Kirsi Peltonen sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

During the week I shared many images, slides, topics. I decided to collect them all, so that they do not get lost in the feed and may turn up useful for myself or someone else in the future. I will not write complete explanations, it will be more of a list of resources. Feel free to use whatever, but please be polite and quote the source (I will indicate the author or the original website for everything).

Mathematics and its applications

X-ray tomography

X-ray tomography is my area of research (see here for details about my current project). Here some resources:

• Wikipedia page on X-ray tomography
• X-ray tomography used in archeology: mummies and lost letters.
• Wikipedia pages on J. Radon and Radon transform.
• VT-cube, a device that reduces X-ray irradiation in dental imaging.
• Denoysing 4D cardiac tomography images.
• Lecture notes on tomography.
• How tomographic data is collected.
• Reference: Smith et al. 1977. "A finite set of radiographs tells nothing at all".
• Compare FBP with other reconstruction algorithms for sparse data.
• An application of dynamic CT: coronary angiography. About 10 million tests carried every year in US.
• Another research group working in dynamic CT.
• Public CT real dataset by University of Helsinki.

Other Inverse Problems

Wikipedia page on Inverse Problems.

Image enhancement and inpainting.

• Inpainting Wikipedia page.
• Image restoration: deblurring & co.
• Our group will soon start working in image enhancement.

Invisibility cloak. How Harry Potter meets mathematics: link 1, link 2.

Creating synthetic voice. I talked about this problem here. A video where my advisor explains the project. His slides: I love this talk, every time it has great success. Speech problems affect many people, 6 to 8 millions in US only.

Seismic tomography. Seismic tomography exploits seismic wave and advanced topology to infere about the inner structure of our planet.

• Wikipedia page on seismic tomography.
• Our research in seismic tomography.

Electrical Impedance Tomography. EIT is a widely used medical imaging technique, employed especially in breathing monitoring.

• Wikipedia page on EIT.
• Our group's research on EIT.

Gravitational Lensing. Wikipedia page: measuring space bodies' properties from their interaction with remote light.

Forest monitoring. The Tampere Inverse Problems group uses inverse problems techniques to monitor and model forests, contributing to fire prevention and paper industry estimations: video.

Other applications

(see also Computer Science section)

Cryptography. Internet transactions require sensible information to be properly masked. For instance, when you buy online with your credit card, data transmission is protected by cryptography techniques (ex. RSA). Here some links:

• RSA Wikipedia page.
• Prime numbers are fundamental for RSA.
• The standard protocol SSL uses RSA.

Big Data. Wikipedia page on Big Data.

Rollercoaster engineering. Rollercoaster loops are designed according to a mathematical curve called Euler spiral, to maximise the fun and minimise nausea. Euler spiral can be found also in highways, to make turning at high speed safer.

Biomathematics. A fun example of biomathematics modelling can be found in this zombie scenario paper. Biomathematics had a big role in containing the Ebola infection.

Finance. Likely the person dealing with your investments is a mathematician. Here a Wikipedia page.

Computer Science

• Mathematics in Google algorithms: article on The Guardian.
• Mathematics in animation movies.
• P=NP problem: link 1, a simple explanation, an article on New Yorker,

Women in Mathematics

• The Fields Medal was won by a woman for the first time in 2014.
• Agora, a movie about a female mathematician of antiquity, Hypatia.
• University of Nottingham playlist on women in mathematics.
• How to propose to a mathematician.
• Sofia Kovalevskaya. My post on her, Google's dedicate Doodle, a movie on her life.
• Book on Minorities in Mathematics.
• TV series: The Bletchey Circle.
• Sophie Germain, who studied with Lagrange.
• How gender stereotypes affect mathematics skills at early age.
• [not only about women] Childcare at conferences: a post on Tenure She Wrote, my vision, Geoscience conference that provides it, some family care grants: LMS - UK, Franklin Women, SMBE, AustMS.
• Representation of women in mathematics at conference: a practical guide.
• Some links on women in STEM.
• Emmy Noether, allowed to work (for free or under a male colleague's name!) in a time when women were not allowed in academic life. A video about her by Katy Mack.

Algebra and Number Theory

Goldbach's conjecture (Wikipedia page). Goldbach's conjecture is an open problem in number theory. It states that every even number greater than 2 is sum of two prime numbers. For instance: 8=5+3, 18=11+7, 22=11+11. This has been checked for huge numbers (), but to date there is no proof that it's true for all even numbers. Some links:

• Page with updates on the verification of the conjecture.
• Post on Terence Tao's blog on his progress.

Collatz's conjecture (Wikipedia page). The conjecture states: take any natural number n. If n is even, compute n/2. If n is odd, compute 3n+1. Iterate the procedure. You'll alway end up at 1.

Fermat's Last Theorem (Wikipedia page). Stated by Fermat in 1635 and proven only in 1995 by Andrew Wiles, it claims that, given any n greater than 2, there is no integer solution to the equation . For instance given a cube, you cannot split it in the sum of two other cubes. Fermat wrote on the margin of a book "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too small to contain.". Here Wiles recalls the moment when he understood his proof was complete (after 7 years of work). If you find the topic interesting, don't miss this great popular book by Simon Singh.

Induction. A technique to prove statements for natural numbers is induction. It works this way: (1) I want to prove statement A is true for all natural numbers, (2) I check A's true for n=1, (3) I assume A's true for a generic n and based on that, I prove A's true for n+1.

Proof of infinity of prime numbers. Euclid proved that prime numbers are infinitely many by a reduction ad absurdum proof. One assumes something, through logic gets to something absurd and concludes the initial assumption must have been false in the first place.

Perfect numbers. A perfect number is an integer that is equal to the sum of its divisors (except the number itself). An example is 6, whose divisors are 1,2,3,6, and 1+2+3=6. A cool property is that the sum of the reciprocals of perfect numbers' divisors is always equal to 2: . So far only even perfect numbers have been found and the question if odd perfect numbers exist is open.

Weird numbers. Some weird names for numbers: sexy primes, friendly numbers, amicable numbers, sociable numbers, twin primes.

Pi. Pi is one the most celebrated numbers ever, even having its own anniversary. Even Star Trek talks about it and Kate Bush wrote a song! Pi is irrational, meaning it cannot be expressed as a fraction. An equivalent formulation is that its infinitely many digits have no pattern, so in principle you can easily find any string of numbers in there. Another property of Pi is that it cannot be expressed as zero of an polynomial with rational coefficients ( is irrational but a zero of instead), making it trascendental. The most decimal places of Pi memorised is 70,000, and was achieved by Rajveer Meena in 2015.

Geometry and Topology

Art and mathematics.

[add Mobius scarf and bacon: downloaded. Add Bathsheba Grossman.]

I mentioned two weird geometry constructions (manifolds) in particular: Möbius' strip and Klein's bottle. They are non-orientable. Möbius's strip has not "over" or "below", Klein's bottle has no "inside" or "outside.

Non-euclidean geometries. Eucliden geometry, the "classical one", is based on some axioms. At some point some mathematicians wondered if they were all necessary and experimented with creating new geometry settings.

Here the Wikipedia page on the topic. Also, non-euclidean geometries relate to Einstein's General Relativity Theory.

The Seven Bridged of Königsberg. This problem was solved by Euler in 1736 and led to the birth of graph theory. Graph theory is used when solving or creating mazes. Another related famous problems is the Four Colour Theorem: given any map, you can use only four colours to fill all countries so that any two adjacent countries have different color. The latter was proved by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken in 1976. They reduced to 1'936 possible cases and then checked them all with a computer. It was the first time computing was used in a formal proof.

The happy ending problem. Below I state the problem visually. George Szekeres went even further and proved you can always draw the polygon you want, if you draw enough initial points (for a convex pentagon: you need 9 points). There is a conjecture stating you need points to be sure to find a convex polygon with sides. The question was named this way because it led to the long-lasting love of Esther and George Szekeres. They were married 70 years and died within one hour from each other. Mathematics can make you fall in love sometime...

Homeomorphisms. One of the funniest tools in topology. Here a video showing why donuts are mugs after all. Below another weird transformation: from a square to a (almost) torus.

Manifolds. Another powerful maps are diffeomorphisms, a level on top of homeomorphisms. Manifolds are geometrical objects that are locally similar to for some n. For instance a sphere is a manifold of dimension 2, small regions are comparable to planar regions. If you consider a sphere, you imagine it embedded in tridimensional space, but truth is you don't know the third dimension. All you know is your 2-dimensional "curved" life on the sphere. This is why you need new tools to define differentiation, that is usually linear and "flat". Manifolds find many real-life applications: for instance seismic tomography (see above) or robotics.

Analysis and Calculus

Harmonic series.  Their name comes from music. The basic question is: can we get infinity by summing up infinitely many infinitesimal quantities? Turns out it depends, as you can see from the figures. Relating to harmonic series is the problem of book stacking.

Integration. The theory of integration started several centuries ago, when people questioned how to calculate "difficult areas", but it was rigorously stated by Riemann in the XIX century. Below you find my explanation of his theory and a visual solution about integrability of monotone functions.

Pompeiu problem. Formulated in the past century, it's still open. Here's my favourite reference on the topic. See the problem below.

Banach-Tarski paradox. With a very formal proof, Banach and Tarski showed it is in principle possible to cut a sphere in pieces and recombine the pieces to get two spheres identical to the first. The trick is to decompose the sphere in non-measurable sets, that is something really artificial and odd.

History of Mathematics

Math duels ("disfide"). Around 1500, mathematicians used to challenge each other to math duels, to prove who was smarter and more able to solve problems. A famous series of such episodes concerned the formula to solve cubic equations, that is equations of the form . It all started with Tartaglia, an Italian mathematician nicknamed like that for his stammering. Born in a poor family, he had been a soldier, a topographer, and was a talented self-taught mathematician. At the time, mathematicians rarely published their results and only shared them with their students and maybe family, so that they would have an ace in their hole when it came to being hired by some university. At some point, a mathematician contemporary to Tartaglia, Antonio Maria del Fiore, started bragging about knowing the formula to solve cubic equations, which he learned from his teacher Scipione Del Ferro. Tartaglia was an ambitious researcher and found the formula independently. He then accepted a "math duel" from del Fiore. Tartaglia annihilated del Fiore and became immediately famous. Cardano, famous mathematician of the time, invited him to Milan. Tartaglia told him the "secret formula", under the oath he would not reveal it. However, he still hesitated to publish it. Years later, Cardano found out that Del Ferro - then long gone - had discovered the formula previously and independently, thus he felt relieved from his promise to Tartaglia. He then allowed his student Ferrari to publish their research and improvements on Tartaglia's formula. The result was a duel, in which Tartaglia lost due to his stammering and lack of confidence in public speaking. Luckily history gave him credit and the solving formula is named also after him.

Evariste Galois. One of the most brilliant mathematicians ever existed, he died very young in a duel (a real one!). Here his biography. His results were crucial to Wiles to prove Fermat Last Theorem.

The stolen theorem. One of the most popular calculus theorems is believed to have been commissioned by De L'Hopital to Johann Bernoulli.

Riemann's hypothesis. A great popular book to know more about prime numbers and a legendary problem in analytical number theory is The Music of Primes by Marcus Du Sautoy.

The Newton-Leibniz controversy. The two illustrious contemporary scientists fought to be recognised as inventor of calculus. Historians now believe they both were right and invented calculus independently, but at the time Newton's influence allowed him to win the argument and Leibniz died in disgrace. This rivalry was quoted in the popular show The Big Bang Theory.

Paul Erdos. Some say he was the greatest mathematician of the past century. He collaborated with more than 500 people, writing more than 1,525 papers, in many different areas and topics! Erdos belonged to an Hungarian Jewish family that lived during Nazism. His father died in the Holocaust and his mother survived in hiding. He didn't have a home: he kept travelling around the world, stopping at conferences or hosted by colleagues. He would knock in the middle of the night at the door of some colleague and say he was ready to solve some problem. No one would dare to turn him down and throw the chance away, 'cause his productivity and genius were out of ordinary. He received 15 honorary doctorates.

Alexander Grothendieck. I wrote about him when he passed last year. Someone translated some of his lectures in English. You can read more on his life here.

Riddles

The hanging picture problem. Hang a picture to the wall using two nails and a string. Fix the string in such a way that if one (any) of the two nails is removed, the picture falls down.

Solution: name by variables the following actions: means "to pass the string over nail 1 clockwise",   means "to pass the string over nail 1 counterclockwise". Similarly for and nail 2. We can combine actions through a sort of multiplications. Passing the string over nail 1 in one sense and then the other would be , so we understand that corresponds to "nothing is done", meaning "the picture falls down". Also, observe (physically) that the actions are not commutative: try and check that it is not equivalent to do only . Also, removing for instance nail 1 corresponds to ignore all actions as and . Hence our problem translates to: write a product so that by removing all occurrences of $x, x^{-1}$ or you get 1. Since our product is not commutative, one solution will be: . Through abstraction you can easily generalise this trick to any number of nails!

A reference link on the topology behind this.

The prisoners. Three prisoners meet a guard in a room. The guard says: "I have hats with me, two of which are black and the others are white". The prisoners ask: "How many hats there are all together?", the guard replies: "It's a secret!". The guard picks three of the hats and puts them on the prisoners' heads. All prisoners see the others' hats color, but not their own. The guard asks them, one after another: "What is the color of your hat?". The first prisoner looks around and replies: "I don't know". The second prisoner looks around and replies: "I don't know". What does the third prisoner reply and what is his hat's color?

Solution: denote B=black and W=white. Because of the replies of prisoner 1 and 2, we can rule out the combinations: W B B and B W B. We are left with the following cases: W W B, B W W, W W W, B B W, W B W. All cases except one show that the third prisoner's hat must be W. Consider the case W W B. The second prisoner hears the first's reply, so he understand he cannot see two black hats, leaving only the possibilities of him seeing two white hats or one black and one white. When his turn comes, he sees the third wearing black, so he concludes his own must be white and replies so. Since he says he doesn't know, we must rule this case out and conclude the third prisoner has white hat and says so.

Palindromes. Find the smallest 3-digit palindrome number that is divisible by 18.

Solution: our number, denote by ABA, must be divisible by 2 and 9. A number is divisible by 9 if the sum of its digits is divisible by 9, hence A+B+A=2A+B is divisible by 9. ABA must be also even, that leaves us the following possibilities:

A=2 -> 2A+B=4+B -> B must be 5

A=4 -> B=1

A=6 -> B=6

A=8 -> B=2

The smallest is 252.

The Monty Hall problem. This is a counter-intuitive problem of probability. Even Paul Erdos, considered the best mathematician of past century, did not believe the solution until he saw computer simulations! The problem asks: you are a guest of a TV programme. The presenter shows you three closed doors: behind one there's the car of your dreams, behind the other two there are goats. He lets you pick a door (say, n.1), but before opening it, he opens one of the other two (say, n.3) and shows a goat behind it. He then asks you: "Do you want to stick with your choice or change to door n.2?". What's the best strategy? The solution says the best strategy is changing your initial choice. Here some material to understand this: link 1, link 2, link 3.

True statements. How many statements are true?

At most 0 statements in this block are true.

At most 1 statement in this block is true.

At most 2 statements in this block are true.

At most 3 statements in this block are true.

Solution: only the last two statements are true. If you assume no statement is true, then the first is true, which is a contradiction. If you assume only one is true, the last three are true, again a contradiction.

The 12 ball problem. You have 12 balls, looking exactly the same, but one is an odd weight (you do not know if it's lighter or heavier). You have a scale (see figure below) and at most three chances to use it. How do you find the odd ball? Solution is in the gallery below.

Sticks. Use 6 identical sticks to build 4 identical triangles.

Solution: click here.

Miscellanea

• How to draw a perfect ellipse.
• The golden ratio to be found in architecture and nature.
• Visualising Pythagoras' theorem.
• Communication of science: SoapBoxScience.
• The Mathematics of Sudoku. 17 is the minimum number of clues to have a unique solution. The "most difficult scheme" was created by a Finn.
• Magic square. In antiquity, they were believed to hold mystical power. Euler's work on magic squares (translated to English).
• Bayesian approach to Inverse Problems: link 1, link 2.
• Gödel incompleteness theorems. Proved by a young Gödel in 1931, they threw mathematicians in panic (still do). A funny look into the topic.
• Mathematical models for traffic jams.
• Free version of the book "A Mathematician's Apology" by the great number theorist G. H. Hardy.

L'articolo Tweeting for Real Scientists: aftermath. sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

The Doctoral School of the Department was kind enough to grant us some fundings this year, so that we could advertise the seminar more and organise some events with special speakers; I sincerely thank DOMAST for the trust!

After about one year and a half from the start of our management, the seminar gets the room full almost every week and I am very pleased to see new faces every time. We even had exceptional events that, to my opinion, contributed to increase the feeling of community among students of different levels (see the pics from the talk on mathematics and zombies here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgzidIygynk&feature=youtu.be

The main purposes of this happening are to offer students a "safe place" where to train their presenting skills and to learn something together. Since people in the audience have different backgrounds, we encourage presenters to choose topics that are accessible to everyone. As Anssi and I are both interested in teaching, communication skills and techniques, in the current semester we advised speakers to privilege explanations on the blackboard than slides (credit to Anssi for the idea). Even though I am myself a fan of slides, I personally think this forced speakers to a slower pace and made the talks better, in general. It was a very interesting experiment! (**)

As we have been getting such good reaction from students, we decided to push further the seminar and we are now also trying to pursue three additional goals:

• try to connect the different departments of Kumpulan Kampus, showing how mathematics is used or needed in other fields,
• encourage networking with other Finnish universities (we had two speakers from Aalto University this spring),
• creating a bridge between university education and the working world, to make math students more aware of what they need "out there".

To this extent, I have been contacting people from other science departments, asking to give math-related presentation of their field of study/research (for instance, Oona Kupiainen-Määttä from Department of Physics will be speaking next Thursday). Personally, my hope is to encourage networking within campus, to create a lively and heterogeneous research/study environment.

Concerning the other idea, we noticed great enthusiasm in students when Prof. Samuli Siltanen presented some suggestions for facing the working world last January. We had to rush to an auditorium because the audience was definitely too wide for our usual little room! This large affluence and the questions after the talk made me think that maybe students wished to be more aware of what they needed to study and do to have an easier life when applying for jobs after their degree. For this reason, we invited a mathematician working at Varma Insurances, Jarno Ruokokoski, who was kind enough to accept promptly. I wish to thank Jarno and Varma for making this possible.

I invite all interested students to participate, since presence will be an important feedback indicator for us for future events!

As a conclusion, I wished to explain all these aspects of the Students' Seminar to show our commitment and purposes. I am really grateful to all speakers who I harassed in the past year and a half and who proved open and generous to give talks, and to the Department for supporting the activity. I strongly hope to provide a good platform for students at different levels to learn new things and to train themselves to become good communicators.

(*) The current webpage of the seminar. Since it changes every semester, in general you can reach it through this webpage, then clicking "Opiskeljioiden seminaari".

(**) I care to underline that this was a mere suggestion. We leave speakers free to choose their own way of presenting and the language they want to talk in (Finnish or English). There is no point in making a speaker uncomfortable!

L'articolo The Students' Seminar: what, who and why sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

Locally in Helsinki and in Finland, I am trying to be active to make sure the environment is welcoming for women to start and continue studies/research/careers in STEM. Just yesterday, here at Inverse Days from where I am writing, we established the ground for a network for women in Inverse Problems in Finland and we will soon launch a mentoring system.

Here you can find the original version of my interview (in Italian language only), but I include below a translation in English. Many thanks to Kibra Sebhat who considered interviewing me. It has been a great honour to have some space in one of my favourite Italian columns about women. Please feel free to comment and share your suggestions.

We need young mentors to encourage girls to study STEM subjects

Regarding the topic of Italian girls who choose not to study STEM subjects, we picked a suggestion from the Twitter community of #27oracommunity. Our follower Paola Elefante replied to our tweet where we asked how to give a chance to girls in the scientific world. In her opinion, mentoring by young female researchers towards high school girls could be the solution. Here she explains her idea.

You suggested mentoring to spread the technology and digital culture among girls: where does such idea come from?
«In all biographies of great women scientists (and, more generally, all emancipated women), you can find the common aspect of someone who encouraged them to study and follow their ambition. I myself, despite being very determined about my projects, I found great support and inspiration in some models, close or not, in my way. In reports on gender equality and the gender gap in STEM, creation of role models and mentoring are suggested as solutions. It is scary to feel part of a minority, if not the only one, doing something.».

You recommend meetings in high schools with university female students or scientific women researchers: why not female professors and why do you think teenagers are the right audience?
«Adolescence is that moment in life when personal identity is formed and young people start wondering what they wish to do with their lives, a time when they need a direction and enthusiasm needs to be encouraged. In such time, young people start criticising how useful school subjects really are: I think it would be very beneficial for them to experience closely where such studies may lead them to. I believe female doctoral students and young researchers may make them feel more comfortable and age proximity could be a benefit. Personally, my memory of high school is still fresh and I feel I would have valuable advice for students.».

What could be discussed at these meetings?
«Many things! I took my degree in Mathematics and now I research in Inverse Problems, industrial mathematics with biomedical applications, a field of which I would not imagined the existence during my university studies. I would explain the useful applications of my job, what kind of mathematics one studies at the university and how the mathematics I studied during high school helped me. To a student's eyes, physics and mathematics are just book exercises to solve. Biology is infinite lists to learn by heart. Chemistry is just balancing formulas with the periodic table. Computer science is Turbo Pascal (help!) or Microsoft Excel. I believe it would be useful to explain them that those are just the basic tools to create innovations and that science, doing science, is much closer than they think.».

Have you even taken part in such meeting? Among the audience or as a speaker?
«Unfortunately I have not, but I would have loved to. In the spirit of getting closer to research, I enjoyed some visits to university laboratories, but I usually planned it myself.».

How can you realise mentoring among girls?
«There are two kinds of mentoring: the indirect one can be realised with the above mentioned meetings or with the help of the web and social media. The culture of blog/social media, with different levels of technical contents, is spreading among young female scientists. Just think of the Twitter channel of Samantha Cristoforetti, but there are several more examples. Direct mentoring already exists at academic level, in many scientific associations of women, but it would be interesting to propose it to high schools. One could create a network to put working women - inside or outside academia - in STEM, with high school girls. In US the association Girls who code organises summer camps and extra classes for young girls who want to understand what computer science is.».

In your profile it is mentioned that you are a doctoral student in Helsinki: how did you start?
«I studied mathematics at University of Bologna, spending my last year as an Erasmus student in Helsinki. During that time, I was offered a PhD student position. I returned to Italy to defend my master thesis and left back with my husband to start this adventure. Finland was suggested by my advisor Prof. Lanconelli, and it was a blessing.».

Why do you think you were chosen in your work team?
«While I was studying in Helsinki, I was noticed for my commitment and enthusiasm. I believe there was some talking among professors, because I was contacted by one whom I barely knew; he was looking for a PhD student to start a project. I immediately accepted!»

How is life for an Italian in Finland?
«I am very happy in Finland, but I do not know if my opinion is worthy, since I was not happy in Italy. The local Italian community is big, there are about 4.000 Italian people in Finland, on a total population of about 5,4 millions. In my experience, only Italian people who were not completely happy in Italy manage to fully integrate, since society and its rules are extremely different.».

L'articolo Women in STEM: let's start from a mentoring system sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

If you step in a restaurant, would you rather eat this:

or this:

Same thing (delicious, by the way), in a different disguise. Having valuable contents matter, but it is worth nothing if you cannot share them.
Improving communication skills can lead to more funding opportunities, more collaborations, not to mention fulfil our implicit social duty, as well-educated people and researchers paid with public money, to educate others. Also, wouldn't it be so much better if you were not to waste an hour of life from your audience and yourself? Instead of blabbering to the air, one can have fun and engage other people.

When I was struggling to improve my presentations, I was suggested this book:

The Craft of Scientific Presentations by M. Alley

I must say it has been revealing to me. The book is very well-written and gives many practical advice. Although I strongly suggest you to buy it and read it all, I can summarise some of the interesting tips the author gives:

1. Identify the audience and their "needs"

   Who are you talking to? This is a piece of information that matters. There is no point in keeping it simple if you are talking to your own team, whose members are studying more or less the same things that you study and have a high technical knowledge. At the same time, mentioning compact operators to a general public is not the wise way to go.
   Surely you would like to highlight some parts (motivation, results, ...) but it is really important that you adapt to what the audience wants to hear. It is not easy to guess it, but it is worth trying. Why did they come to your talk? What do they value the most? Is it numerical results or a general hint of the subject or why you research that particular topic? Are they looking for collaborations or are they the guys you are about to ask fundings from?

2. Create a good structure of the talk

   Still in the spirit of 1), try to create a catchy talk structure. It doesn't have to be linear! How about stressing the struggles you had while researching? Or talking 80% of the time of motivation behind the problem? You are there to tell a story and be honest about your efforts, it always works. If you have a mixed audience, you can also create a sort of "bumping" sequence, where you alternate easy concepts and advanced ones, so that everyone can follow (this is very hard though!). In addition, try to underline the transition points of the talk, so that you do not lose anyone in the way.

3. Use nice visuals

   It is 2014 and we are long past PowerPoint. There are several other ways to make nice slides: LaTeX, Keynote, Prezi, and many more. If you really love PowerPoint you can use it, but please make it nice. No long lists (maximum is 4 items per list and do not cheat by embedding lists into each other - if you are a mathematician I know you thought of this case while reading) and no long text. I know this is common knowledge, but I still meet speakers who write an entire book in one slide and are convinced that the audience can read and at the same time listen to them. Or - the horror - that the audience is not annoyed by reading and listening to them reading out loud the whole slide. People, no. Stop.
   If you are curious about basic design techniques, here is a short and nice guide.

These are just my favourite tips. Recall it is your responsibility to engage the audience. You have to earn their attention, it is not for free... and, at the end of the day, giving a nice talk it is in everybody's best interest.

I personally know I still have to go a long way to be a good speaker, but I hope that practice and feedback will help soon to get to a new level of expertise.

L'articolo The book that will improve your presentations sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.

One privilege I had and I am sure many of this blog's readers had is education. Education is the key to freedom, that is something a tremendous amount of women do not have in this world. Let's shiver with horror together by reading some facts and figures (*):

• 35% of women worldwide have experienced physical abuse in their lifetime (2013).
• 700 million women now alive were married under 18 years of age.
• 133 million girls now alive have experience female genital mutilation (FGM).

These are just some figures I selected to stress how bad the situation is. Such horrible experiences leave a mark for life.

Many of these girls cannot save or defend themselves because they lack proper education, they were not given the tools to break free and they were left in the dark. To understand this deeper, I invite you to watch this powerful TED Talk video by Kakenya Ntaiya about female genital mutilation. I was really impressed when she explained how such practice is considered "normal" in many places and girls do not even know what is going to happen. Or when she tells the abuse that her mother had to undergo, because women were not allowed to own anything. The same goes with child marriage, of course.

Ignorance is a sickness affecting also our closer world. It can mean one of your female colleague not being aware of her rights regarding sexual harassment. It can mean your daugther not knowing what abuse - physical or not - is and being a victim of her boyfriend. Or it can be your son or your male friends not understanding the deep social problem affecting women's lives and, for instance, not reacting to episodes of abuse or exploitation happening more or less under their eyes. Don't forget, very recent research stresses how violence against women is a big problem even in Finland, where the rate is about double of the average in Europe (**).

What I would like to stress is that violence against women and gender inequality are not a women's problem, is everybody's problem. We have the social and moral duty to create the best society we can by speaking for those who have no or little voice. As women, we have to become more aware of our rights and spread such awareness. As men, you have to support us in doing so (***).

Going back to the initial point of this post, I invite you all to become more aware and take action.

Invest in developing countries education

You can share your privilege of education in a thousand ways. Support foundations (The Malala Fund, Girls Not Brides, Akanksha Foundation, ...), sponsor a child (Save The Children, Islamic Relief, Child Fund International, ...) and, why not, volunteer yourself for education projects (Peace Corps, others, ...).

Invest in local education

Promote sexual harassment training or gender inequality seminars at your workplace, sponsor local institutions and foundations dealing with such problems, discuss with your kids' teachers and other parents about the opportunity to have seminars at school on abuse, violence and gender inequality (****).

Educate your children

They will be men and women tomorrow. Don't be afraid to talk to them about problems, grow their empathy and awareness, give the best example you can. Teach them well what abuse is and how to recognise it.

Don't be afraid to act

If you have the feeling something is not right around you and that some of your acquaintance is experiencing abuse or violence, silence is the worst way to go. If you do not want to be exposed, please be aware there are many ways to report anonymously. Show empathy to the victims and understand they may not have the strength to react. Please understand that your reaction is important to victims of abuse, because it defines to their eyes what is right and what is wrong, in a moment of their lives when they do not know at all.

We need each one of you to end violence against women!

(*) Source: UN women research, 2013.

(**) A very recent social experiment, underlines that it's not all butterflies in Sweden as well.

(***) One first easy step could be join the He for She movement.

(***) Although there was still no case of FGM brought in court in Finland, a recent report of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health underlines how it is important to take into account the increasing immigration flow and the consequent increasing risk of FGM happening locally. To this regard, prevention is a key factor. Other countries, such as Scotland, are acting in this sense by involving directly schools.

L'articolo #16days: each of us can fight violence against women sembra essere il primo su Paola Elefante.