Indonesia lags behind

Indonesia lags behind

I am writing this letter in conjunction with my article Time
to ponder over mathematics teaching (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 18,
2000).

In particular, I would like to discuss the data I obtained
recently from http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/ concerning the total
number of publications by mathematicians in six Southeast Asian
countries: Indonesia (20); Malaysia (363); Singapore (1,503); the
Philippines (155); Thailand (73); Vietnam (1,623).

This only confirms how our mathematical sciences have been
left behind by our neighbors. I am not sure how other sciences
perform, but I guess they would not differ much. Of course, I am
aware that the Directorate General of Higher Education has
various programs, including one to increase the number of
international publications of our scholars, but I guess this is
not sufficient.

In this era of knowledge, it is worrying how we as a nation
can compete regionally, let alone globally.

HENDRA GUNAWAN

Visiting Researcher

at School of Mathematics

UNSW, Sydney