On Friday the 18th of November, 10 A level students travelled to central London to a Maths in Action conference.
The first lecture was Fighting Disease with Mathematics given by Sara Jabbari from the University of Birmingham.
Sara described the way mathematics can be used to understand antibiotic resistance, track the dynamics of bacterial infections and how mathematics helps in the development of new drugs to tackle disease.
The second lecture was Over-analysing Video games given by Matthew Scroggs from the University of Cambridge.
Matt applied some mathematical thinking to Pac-Man and other video games. He worked out the shortest possible route to complete a Pac-Man level and showed us his attempt – which was pretty impressive. He also discovered the 2-, 3- and 4-dimensional shapes that video game characters live on.
The third lecture was Mathematical stories by Katie Steckles who is a Mathematician and Communicator.
Did you know that Pascal was not the first person to discover Pascal’s triangle? There is evidence of other mathematicians who discovered this centuries before Pascal. Pascal was the first to publish this, hence it was named after him.
The fourth lecture was How to get rich quick by Sophie Maclean who is a Mathematician and Communicator.
Being able to determine the future is a great way to get money. From fairground games to the stock market, knowing what will happen is a great advantage. But even if we don’t know for certain, statistics and probability can help us make valuable predictions. In this session, Sophie gave an introduction to the world of finance and shared some of the Maths she used working as a trader on the Amsterdam stock exchange. Please note: she did not give any financial advice to the students!
The last lecture of the day was given by Nicole Cozens who is a Maths Educator about Staring into Space.
How big is the Earth? How far away is the furthest space craft? How many aliens are there? We looked at questions that people have asked about Space, and mathematical solutions (not all right!) that people have created. Nicole also gave an informative guide to exam success earlier in the day.
It was an enjoyable day out and Year 12 started to see how mathematics is used in the real world.
