My presentation was on Thursday at 10.00 am, immediately following the keynote address (Gerd Gigorenza) at 9.00 am and in the same (main) auditorium. At breakfast, Konstantinos was saying that he was reading the paper in the proceedings, and I suggested that I talk to him about it and that would help me practice. That is what we did, and from his questions I realised which slides needed more time and explanation. I had put my talk onto the computer before Gerd had given his 'invited' talk. The main auditorium is generally reserved for the invited symposia and special talks. It has the advantage of being the 'default' venue though and thus a guaranteed good audience. This is the second conference where I have been scheduled in the this venue.
I felt that I delivered the talk well and clearly, although I would have liked a little more time. Rochel gave very complimentary feedback about the 'neatness' of the study and made particular mention of the joint competencies of 'ordering' and 'equivalence' of fractions in fraction addition. I had always felt that this was a rather controversial aspect of the rationale for the study and it was one of the things I had dwelt on to try to get the idea across, so I was relieved that she particularly mentioned this. She also talked to me afterwards over coffee, and I felt that she certainly felt that the work added to a field of study of which she is an integral part.
We had most odd and unpredicted pouring rain on Thursday. This basically caused mayhem for the organising committee. There is a caterer who comes in to serve lunch for those who have bought tickets. Although it is a bit overpriced for what it is, I decided early in the week to have the lunch here rather than walk down into Delphi to one of the restaurants (the preferred option for many of the delegates). When the heavens opened as the session prior to lunch finished, all those who thought that they would go out for lunch decided that they wanted to stay and of course they had not bought tickets. Eventually it was solved by the caterers sending out to one of their other outlets and more food arrived, so many people now had to be allocated tickets and money collected.
Then, the planned visit to the archaeological site had to be postponed from Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon because of the rain. Whereas, I was happy to miss the sessions on Thursday afternoon as they were not particularly interesting, I was not prepared to miss Friday's, so I was one of the many who now requested a refund! However, I was sitting at lunch with Gerd Gigerenza (who I am sure I cited in something I wrote as an undergraduate). He had paid to go to the archaeological site today and also couldn't go tomorrow as he was chairing the session I wanted to attend. We therefore decided to go together under our own steam on Friday morning at 9.00am. He is at the Max Plank Institute and gave a very entertaining talk on Thursday on decision-making based on simple heuristics and gut-feelings.
2 comments:
When you say that "she certainly felt that the work added to a field of study of which she is an integral part" it sounds like there's a potential pun to be made, since the integral part of a fraction is presumably the integer at the start (when it is written as a mixed number).
But I guess unless she used that exact terminology and also understood that "integral" was the adjective from "integer" the joke might not have gone too well.
It sounds like your presentation went well. I agree that it is difficult to update one's blog but it is definitely worth it! I look forward to hearing about your visit to the archaeological site - hopefully the weather holds off so you can go!
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