Inspiring Maths Chris Budd 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 …

What are we really trying to achieve in a maths lesson To communicate some real mathematics and developing an argument To get the message across that maths is important, fun, beautiful, powerful, challenging, all around us and central to civilisation To entertain and inspire our students To leave them wanting to learn more about maths and not less Why is it so hard to do this? What maths can we tell everyone about? What is being done? What works.. And what doesnt?

But lets face it, we have a problem The challenge is to convey the excitement and importance of maths in a way which does not trivialise the subject or switch off the audience Maths genuinely is hard, can be scary, and requires thought to do well And it suffers from an image problem with teenagers

Things that have found to have worked with students Hooking them with an application relevant to their lives and then showing the maths involved eg. Mazes, ipods, Google, Facebook Being proud of our subject! Surprising them …. Maths is magic! Linking maths to real people … all maths was invented by someone! Not being afraid to present them with a real formula or real mathematics!!!

Maths and magic Mathematical surprises Maths in the Battle of Britain Maths will save your life Maths and art. Some possibilities

Magical Maths: Wheres the Joker?

Surprising Mathematics What is the chance of winning the lottery? 6/49*5/48*4/47*3/46*2/45*1/44=1/ How likely are you to live to see the result? Chance of dying in one week in a car crash (3000/52)/ = 1/ How predictable is maths? Chaos, climate change

Useful Maths: The Battle of Britain July-Sept Germans dismissed Radar thinking that a ground station could only control one aircraft at a time!! H. Dowding 600 RAF vs Luftwaffe

Maths was used to find and track the enemy aircraft!

Aircraft detected using a mixture of statistics and trigonometry Last known position of German aircraft Projected position using trigonometry Estimates of position from Radar stations Position combining the two

Maths can save the world! VENTRICULUS HAEMOLYMPH 0.05mm

X-Ray Object ρ : Distance from the object centre θ : Angle of the X-Ray Measure attenuation of X-Ray R( ρ, θ ) Source Detector

REMARKABLE FACT If we can measure R( ρ, θ ) accurately we can calculate the X-ray attenuation factor f(x,y) of the object at any point Knowing f tells us the structure of the object Mathematical formula discovered by Radon (1917) Took 60 years before computers and machines were developed by Cormack to use his formula

Artistic Maths Robert Lang

DeerBeetle Crease patterns are worked out using mathematics Maths is used to create origami patterns We can use origami to teach maths eg. Trisecting the angle

Chris Budd