In 2016-2017 The Maths Academy
will be offering interactive lectures to students and schools across South Yorkshire and beyond! We are
offering an Interactive Lecture Series for students who are able come to the University
of Sheffield and a travelling Road Show that will visit schools to give interactive lectures.
You can find details of lecture dates, times, and locations in the descriptions below.
If you'd like the Road Show to visit your school, or if you'd like to attend the Interactive Lecture Series then please email Fionntan Roukema (f.roukema(at)sheffield.ac.uk). General questions are also very welcome!
For the last five years, The Interactive Lecture Series has inspired, motivated, and encouraged students from across Sheffield to engage with, and understand what mathematics is. However, we're not happy; these interactive mathematical experiences should be available to everyone, not just those attending schools that are close to the university. So, we're going to bring some of these interactive lectures to your school!
All you have to do is contact Fionntan Roukema (f.roukema(at)sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange a visit. The number of visits we can make is restricted, so please contact us as soon as possible avoid disappointment.
This is an interactive lecture series aimed at eager and interested year 12 and year 13 students. The lectures will be highly interactive and so the session content may differ from the titles and descriptions below. There is a restricted number of places and priority will be given to year 12 students. All sessions will take place on Wednesdays 16:30-17:45 in the Hicks Building in Lecture Theatre B (see the map below). To get to Lecture Theatre B you must use the Hicks Building entrance at the bottom of the hill and go up one set of stairs.
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Links to further reading will be posted after the sessions above so that you can independently research beyond what you saw during the lecture. You can have a look at details of the sessions from semester one below.
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This will be a talk about infinity; take the red pill and see how far the rabbit hole goes! In this lecture we'll think about what infinity is, and rediscover a stunning result that shook the world of nineteenth century mathematics. Remarks and links following the session:
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Lots of things evolve in time in a way which looks random. Examples can include asset prices in finance, biological populations and membership of social networks. I'll introduce Markov chains, which are a type of probabilistic model with a lot of theory which can be applied in many of these situations, and illustrate it by showing you how to win at Monopoly (well, possibly!) and some of the ideas behind Google's search algorithms. Remarks and links following the session:
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How high we can make our numbers, without hitting the ceiling of infinity? Well, as high as you want, obviously! We'll talk about how to make big numbers efficiently. Remarks and links following the session:
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Counting starts on your fingers but it can very easily get out of hand! We will see how we can answer questions of the type "How many..?" quickly, using techniques that combine more than one area of mathematics. Remarks and links following the session:
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Mathematics is not all about knowing how to find the answer, it is also about questioning understanding and making a journey to the answer. In this talk, we will look at some famous results that appear to be strange and do not appear likely. These are called paradoxes, and we will explore a few together. Remarks and links following the session:
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