Here is a short (< 2 min) YouTube video providing career advice from the Chief Economist at Google. And here's a NY Times article interviewing him (Hal Varian) where he says: "If you are looking for a career where your services will be in high demand, you should find something where you provide a scarce, complementary service to something that is getting ubiquitous and cheap. So what's getting ubiquitous and cheap? Data. And what is complementary to data? Analysis. So my recommendation is to take lots of courses about how to manipulate and analyze data: databases, machine learning, econometrics, statistics, visualization, and so on."

Throughout 2009 the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations research will be hosting one of this year's New Zealand Science, Technology and Mathematics Teaching Fellows. Frank Kane, Head of Mathematics at Wellington's Onslow College was awarded one of the prestigious fellowships in order answer the question "Where is this stuff used?". He will explore ways in which the calculus component of higher secondary mathematics is used in applications in the wider world and how its study builds at university level.

Frank has already attended the Mathematics in Industry Study Group in Wollongong, Australia, where he was part of a team looking at modelling the slumping of steel rolls. During the year he will attend courses in applied mathematics and operations research at Victoria, talk to applied mathematicians and scientists here and at other institutions in the Wellington region and pursue some case studies. Frank's primary contact in MSOR is Peter Donelan. If you would like to find out how the project is progressing then read Frank's blog.

The school holds a regular informal seminar series on matroid theory. Anyone interested in participating should contact Prof Geoff Whittle.

And also a warm welcome to our new Post Doc Carolyn Chun. Carolyn is funded by Geoff Whittle's Marsden Grant and will be working on problems in matroid representation theory.