Maths Inspiration Trip
Mrs K Coldwell, STEM Leader: Mathematics, writes:
On Thursday 5th December, a select group of Year 11 and Year 12 students made their way to the Phoenix Theatre in the West End for one of the annual Maths Inspiration shows. With the set of the hit musical “Come From Away” as a backdrop, the group of Stanborough students alongside several hundred others from other schools heard short talks from four of the biggest names in maths communication.
We arrived just in time to hear Matt Parker (author of “Adventures in the Fourth Dimension” and “Humble Pi” as well as TV, radio and YouTube regular) introducing the first talk, which was delivered by Rob Eastaway, also a well-known author of popular maths books, who spoke about “Maths on the Back of an Envelope”. He explored a class of problems called Fermi problems (after another mathematician) and asked questions such as “How many sausages will be eaten in Britain today?” This was followed by Hannah Fry (also a best-selling author and regular on television and radio) giving us a preview of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on “Secrets and Lies” which will be presented by her on Boxing Day, December 27th and December 28th. All will be televised on BBC 4 at 8pm each evening. The final talk was given by Colin Wright on the topic of “Patterns and Predictions” and involved lots of humour and juggling. At the end of the day, we felt privileged to have seen so many gifted maths communicators in one place demonstrating the usefulness and intrigue of
different areas of mathematics.
“Very enjoyable – the speakers were entertaining, and the maths was suitably mind-boggling.” Annabel Dunstan, 11A
“I’m inspired to learn how to juggle, but I probably won’t.” Jack Moylan, 11O