On Monday 23rd March, Sixth Form mathematicians were invited to attend an event at The Hexagon Theatre called ‘Maths Inspiration’, which is a national programme of interactive maths lecture shows for teenagers. The event was hosted by Matt Parker and consisted of three talks from mathematicians, who each presented ideas about mathematics live in the context of exciting, real-world applications. This event is known as one of the largest and most successful maths enrichment programmes in the UK, and we were honoured to attend.
The first talk was given by Rob Eastway, who has been a Director of Maths Inspiration since it began in 2004. He is an author whose books on everyday maths include the bestselling Maths On the Back of an Envelope and Much Ado About Numbers. His talk was titled ‘Are you smarter than ChatGPT?’, and focused on how generative artificial intelligence responds to problems that humans may find counterintuitive. It was really intriguing to discover how incorrect AI can be sometimes when dealing with mathematical problems, and understand how famous paradoxes work. A highlight from his talk was towards the end, when a simple word riddle – which the majority of the audience could decipher instantly – stumped ChatGPT completely, underlining the importance of not trusting AI blindly.
The second talk was given by Alison Kiddle, who is a mathematician and educator from the east of England. She is also a writer, puzzlesmith, teacher and crafter. Her talk was titled ‘One in a million’, and she discussed probabilities of very specific events, such as accidental ways to die and winning the lottery if you bought 27 tickets. Her talk was really inspiring as it helped us to understand how to apply mathematics to figure out the likelihood of events you would assume are impossible to deduce. She also talked about her time appearing on the show ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’, and thus demonstrated applications of probabilities in a real life context. It was really fascinating to hear about her experience on the show, and how she presented a variety of ideas that left us all curious to discover more.
The third and final talk was given by Matthew Scroggs, who is a Senior Research Software Engineer at University College London. He works on numerical methods that can be used to simulate light and sound waves. His talk was titled ‘Maths at the video game arcade’, and included audience volunteers who he called up to demonstrate their abilities at various computer games. He explored the best way to win at Pac-Man, and introduced us to his variations of the game Asteroids. By making a model of the game called ‘Mathsteroids’, he demonstrated how the game can be played on a selection of interesting mathematical surfaces. It was really cool to see how this affected the difficulty of the game – and was a unique twist on such a classic game.
Overall, the event was thoroughly enjoyable and lived up to its name of being inspirational. Numerous ideas were presented that showed us there is more to maths than just exams. By experiencing the event with like-minded students, it was a great way to bond over a shared love for mathematics, and I would strongly recommend this event to future Sixth Form mathematicians.
