Mathematics Masterclasses 2018

How Round is Your Circle?

Mechanisms are all around us, but we often take them for granted, or don't even notice they exist. Many rely on rotating parts. That is, one circular part which fits inside another. To work smoothly and without wearing out they need to be made very accurately. In some situations this is critical to safety.  How do you test if something is round? The mathematics needed to answer to this question involves the shape of the 50p coin, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986 and how to drill a square hole.

Statistics is the science of learning from data. We'll have a look at how statisticians have been contributing to the data science revolution, and use their methods to compare the statistics of Ronaldo and Messi, to learn how height can be related with weight, and to show how you can use statistics to detect fraud.

Meet the three dimensional shapes that have captured the interest and imagination of mathematicians for thousands of years. We will discover their mystical origins, investigate their properties and prove important results about these and other polyhedra in a hands on exploration of the beauty and order of euclidean geometry.

13th October

Francesca Iezzi

Dancing with Mathematics

How is Maths related to folk dences, like Ceilidh? 

They both have something to do with patterns. Often complex dances are based on a series of simple patterns, where, after a certain number of moves and swaps, dancers return to their initial positions. Drawing on folk dances, I will introduce the area of Mathematics, called “group theory”, which lies behind the study of patterns and symmetries, then I will talk about other applications of this area. There will be space for creativity, and you will also invent your own dance!

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Break over school holidays.

27th October

Benedetta Mussati

Building on prime numbers

Prime numbers are those natural numbers greater than 1 which cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers. They have fascinated people for centuries, and they are at the core of theorems defining the structure of numbers, such as the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. Despite intensive research, many of their aspects still remain unknown, like their apparent inexistent pattern. Today we will dive through the history of primes, the advancements made and current real-world applications such as cryptography.

Euclid's Pictures

Euclidean geometry is the ancient science of straight lines and circles. To get to the heart of its beauty, all you need is a pencil, a straight edge, and a pair of compasses! Despite its initial apparent simplicity, the importance of Euclidean geometry in mathematics runs deeply. Indeed, Einstein (in the very opening page of his famous book on Relativity Theory) writes about how Euclid's pictures provided him the gateway to his own profound understanding of physics. In this masterclass, we hope to reveal how drawing geometrical pictures in the spirit of Euclid can lead to a deep understanding of the geometry of the universe!

Des Johnston

The Game of Life was invented by a British mathematician, John Horton Conway, in 1970. It is played on a square grid like a chess board on which cells live, die or are born according to simple rules. In many ways these cells behave like living things, in spite of the simplicity of the rules that govern their fate, and this led to the name of "Life" for the game. The masterclass session first introduces the Game of Life and explains the rules. We will then play Life on a computer, exploring different starting patterns and even the effect of changing the rules, and also explore the game on paper.

Maths and finance: chickens and eggs

The relationship between maths and finance is obvious, What is less well known is the role of money and commerce in stimulating the development of maths. The talk will mix examples of the relationship between maths and financial decision making with accounts of how commercial practice has influenced the development of maths and scientific theories.