There's Been Deafening Silence Following the Release of the Report -- Peter Hall. (March 17, 2010)

Interviewed by The Australian's Guy Healy, Peter Hall in commenting on the the report released last week by the Group of Eight on the state of mathematics in Australia opined that Australia is "going backwards" on maths education and the disciplines it supported.

Professor Hall, a Federation Fellow, holds a chair at The University of Melbourne, and a visiting professorship at the University of California, Davis, is a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as the Australian Academy of Science, and has made outstanding contributions in the fields of probability theory and nonparametric statistics, with over 500 publications to his name. Were Professor Hall a fulltime US academic there is every likelihood he would be a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Harking back nearly fifty years Professor Hall noted: "In 1964 Donald Horne wrote that Australia showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society. Australia didn't have to develop technology and innovation; [it] could earn what [it] needed by what could be obtained from the soil. The concern of my colleagues and I is that we are actually heading back there to some extent."

And he added that he and his colleagues had been especially worried by the lack of response to the report by federal and state governments: "There's been deafening silence following the release of the report."

Professor Hall points out that there has been a "massive drift" from senior maths in secondary education and to overcome it will be a "wicked problem".

To sheet home the extent of what shows the signs of an impending disaster for the nation, this year, of  the 38 Australian universities only 25 will offer a major in mathematics with just 15 offering one in statistics. Quite apart from any other considerations, how this will affect the training of students majoring in the sciences at those universities lacking facilities to provide majors in maths and stats is a dismal prospect.