Remarkable Delta '03 - Conference Report

The Delta series of conferences are held specifically to provide a forum for Southern Hemisphere counties on the teaching and learning of mathematics at the tertiary level. Hence the main participants for the Remarkable Delta ’03 conference held in Queenstown from November 21 to November 27^th, 2003, came from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In addition though, we had delegates from Samoa and Uruguay, and, of course, the Northern Hemisphere countries of Canada, Great Britain, the USA and France. Altogether there were 115 participants with 26 accompanying persons.

The conference was organized around four plenary speakers, four panels, seven workshops, and 71 contributed papers. Plenary sessions were given by

• Johann Engelbrecht, South Africa
• Anna Sierpinska, Canada
• Lynn Steen, USA
• Chris Wild, New Zealand.

The panel topics were on Bridging Courses and related matters, Statistics, Technology, and Undergraduate Mathematics. Contributed papers were divided into "full" and "short" presentations. All papers were refereed and the full papers appeared in a special Proceedings edition of the New Zealand Journal of Mathematics. These papers were generally the result of theoretically based research projects, while the short papers were in the main based on practical experience. Short papers were published in the Remarkable Delta ’03 Communications volume. Abstracts of the various sessions can be found in the conference programme booklet or here on the website. Copies of the Proceedings ($30) and the Communications (free) are available by emailing igoodwin@maths.otago.ac.nz.

The conference was organized by three committees; the International Steering Committee (ISC), the Programme Committee (PC) and the Local Organising Committee (LOC). All of these committees are named on the conference website but I would like to single out the following people for their help in the successful running of the conference:

• Greg Oates and Mike Thomas, for spending many hours editing the Proceedings;
• John Curran, treasurer, for keeping us within budget;
• Irene Goodwin, for a million positive contributions, from being a friendly and helpful face at the registration desk to organizing extremely popular conference packs;
• Robert Lewis, for cheerfully helping out whenever necessary; and
• Greg Trounson, for maintaining technological devices in the electronically hostile environment of the conference venue.

At this point it is important to note that we were able to do everything that we wanted thanks to the generous financial support of several groups. Our sponsors to whom we are extremely grateful are:

• Department of Mathematics, University of Auckland;
• Department of Statistics, University of Auckland;
• Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Otago;
• The Australian Mathematical Society;
• The New Zealand Mathematical Society;
• The New Zealand Statistical Association;
• The Royal Society of New Zealand; and
• Texas Instruments.

As of now, it would appear that the next Delta Conference will be held in 2005 at Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia. For current details email Chris Harman, harman@usq.edu.au.

Derek Holton

Chair, Delta '03