On Friday 25th of February, 16 year 12’s and myself went to the Royal Institution in London for Maths Fest.  A great day was had by all in a beautiful building. The speakers were engaging and the topics they covered interesting.

We learnt how statistics is used to verify whether a new drug is effective, how data can be misleading and that you must look at the bigger picture and how WIFI and phone signals work so we can all use our mobile phones at the same time without the signals being blocked by someone else’s device.

We also learnt about the lesser known Lorenzo machine the top Nazi generals used in WW2 to communicate between each other which was cracked by a team effort of a linguist, mathematician and engineer.  This machine was reversed engineered.

In the afternoon we learnt about cake envy – how do you cut a cake so no one is envious about the slice of cake someone else receives.  Seems like a trivial problem until it is put into the real life context of international relations.

We also learnt how Pythagoras worked on music chords which culminated with speaker and mathematician Ben Sparks singing to us with his twin brother on the screen.

Here is what some of our students thought of the day:

A very fun and educational trip to the magnificent royal institute, and I found out that maths is involved in many different aspects of life

Life changing experience

It was interesting seeing how the mathematics of sharing a chocolate cake could relate to the broader topic of international relations