Maths in Action

On the morning of Wednesday 20 November 2019, the Year 10s excitedly gathered around the Terrace to prepare for their journey to Maths in Action. Once we were registered and got our packed lunches, we were already off before we knew it! The train journey was approximately 50 minutes from Northwood Station to Westminster Station. On the train journey, we were all so enthusiastic and curious as to what we would learn about at Emmanuel Centre. Upon our arrival, we were amazed by the size of the lecture room. More than 900 hundred students had attended and manged to fit in there!

While we sat down, we began by getting our pens, paper and calculators out to start doing the starter questions on the digital board that were presented to us. It was not long before the first speech by James Grime began. It was called “Bits and Pieces: secrets of the digital world”. He talked about the basics of technology – binary. We send messages through 1s and 0s. It was the systematic way of sending messages. During WWII, Nazi Germany used to send secret codes digitally by using the well known enigma. However, they also used a more powerful machine known as Lorenz. It was more difficult than an enigma and only 4 of them are left in the entire world! The most fascinating point about his speech was the fact Lorenz is the way our Wi-Fi – that we use all the time – works. It contains modern frequency hopping and there is no signal interference. The Maths behind this is incredible as we rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth everyday because of Lorenz.

Just soon after, Amini came on stage. She is a software developer in NOWTV and her title was ‘Engineering in the Future’ She begun by asking us a very interesting question – how many people can you fit in a telephone box? While many of us thought a maximum of four people, it turned out we were incorrect. Up to 10 people can fit into a telephone box – but it is very uncomfortable and you would be squished like a pancake. She taught us all how our photos on Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp are transferred by pixels and how these very pixels work. We could relate this idea in terms of humans. If each human were a pixel, we would hold different data such as birthdays, favourite dog and name.  The most interesting fact is that the use of pixels as gone so far that computers have become so powerful to create humans who do not even exist!

After a 10-minute break, our next speech was from Dr Aoife Hunt who amazed all of us with the topic of ‘Movement of Crowds’. She begun by describing “maths in words in disguise.” She discussed one of the most thrilling topics in the history of Maths – crowds. A part of her job is evaluating how long it takes to evacuate from certain places. There must be certain factors that affects this – how many people are there, how many routes are there, but most importantly; how quick people walk! Density does matter for her as you can be the fastest person in the world but density can reduce your speed. As humans are terrible at counting, she uses a lot of simulations in order to calculate the evacuation process, linking this in with different types of graphs such as quadratic graphs. She describes Maths as “it is all about finding patterns and solving problems.”

Now, we had a speech from Paul Harrison who has been working as a Maths teacher for 30 years and has been Head of Department for 15 years. He taught us all the best revision techniques to reach those top grades in our Maths GCSE papers. He gave us a list of resources, different techniques and a guide on how to revise and how to approach certain questions.

After having a peaceful lunch break, we heard a presentation from Mathew Scroggs about “Over Analysing Games”. Mathew has been to Oxford, Cambridge and UCL and now works in the field of Maths. He talked about the simple game we all know as ‘Pac Man’. He programmed it in such a way, that when it went off in any direction it come back form somewhere else. Every time, he did this, he showed us a 3D or 4D diagram to help us visual what was going on in terms of shapes. This intrigued all of us very much.

The last speech was everyone’s favourite. Presented by Alex Bellos, we had puzzle time! For this 35-minute speech, we did a lot of puzzles from his new book ‘A Strategy for Displacement of Improper Thoughts’. We were all thrilled by working in pairs or groups to work these puzzles. There were ones about rabbit ears and even marriage!

At 4pm we departed from Emmanuel Centre without our Maths revision guides back to school. We were all buzzing with joy and laughter from such a thrilling day! Thank you to Education in Action and Mrs Hashemi for organizing such a memorable trip!

By Anvi, Year 10