Lila Spencer, an Abbey alumna and student at Oxford University, gave a fascinating talk on studying Mathematics at university to a large audience of students from the Fifth and Sixth Forms in December.

Lila talked about her own experiences of first discovering and being inspired by new areas of Maths while at school. She described how these related to the more abstract and rigorous approaches at university level. She discussed the parallels between Mathematics and logic, encouraging students to think about the presuppositions inherent in numbers and techniques such as addition or multiplication.

She spoke eloquently about Euler’s conjecture, a theory which had been thought to be true for almost two hundred years before a counterexample was found, and the community effort required to provide a proof for Fermat’s last theorem. She also spoke about perceptions of the difficulty of Mathematics, and challenged the audience to feel excited by a challenge question rather than intimidated.

She also gave a large number of tips on how to ensure that a Maths degree was the right choice. In addition, many opportunities for further research and exploration were recommended.

It was a great pleasure to hear such an inspiring, approachable and enthusiastic talk. The large audience left feeling that Maths at university was a much less forbidding and far more exciting prospect than they had previously thought.

Mr Michael Dalton