Some ten (and change) years ago, the African Summer Theory Institute (ASTI) took place in Cape Town at UCT. This was a course designed for students to give them a taste of a number of topics related to theoretical physics. These lectures were all recorded, and I watched them at the time, never of course thinking for a moment that I would end up lecturing in the same venue a decade or so later. In particular, I remembered that the lectures by Robert de Mello Koch on Group Theory were some of the most pedagogically clear that I had ever seen. Sadly, the old ASTI website seems to be defunct, but the lectures can all be found on YouTube.
I wanted to start posting some of them here and see if people seem enthusiastic about me posting more. It would be great to have some comments on this post to let me know if you would like more of these, or of course if you have any questions or comments about the material itself.
For those not studying physics, but interested only in the maths: Do not be put off by the fact that this is motivated from a physical example in the first few minutes of the lecture. We quickly get onto the mathematics which can be understood completely independently of the physics which has been mentioned.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Its really interesting 😀 Im excited to start computer science at uct in a month
Many thanks for the comment Sashin – we’re looking forward to seeing you at UCT too.
I have a whole month before university begins. All my friends have started at other universities so im just killing time. Do you think there is anything I can do to get myself prepared for maths in university. I believe the course ill be doing is MAM100W if im studying Computer Science
There are MOOCs which cover (more or less) the same material as MAM1000W. The best one by far is UPenn’s one here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus
The best programming MOOC you can take to prepare for CS1015/6 is this one: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-mitx-6-00-1x-9
The course material is free, including exercises.