Outreach

How have mathematicians communicated in the past? How do we communicate now? In this illustrated talk I outline some of the ways (both spoken and written) in which I have tried to 'spread the word', with particular emphasis on graph theory and combinatorics, and on the history of mathematics, areas that seem to lend themselves to outreach to a range of audiences.

Maths videos on YouTube can be used to teach maths, or to just show people something interesting. Making videos doesn't have to be technically difficult, but is good practice in explaining difficult concepts in clear and succinct ways. In this session we will discuss how to make your first YouTube video, including questions about content, presentation and video making.

Dr James Grime started making his first maths YouTube videos while working as a postdoc in 2008. James has made maths videos with Cambridge University, the Royal Institution, and MathsWorldUK, and is also a presenter on the popular YouTube channel Numberphile, which now has over 4 million subscribers worldwide.

“You can either do maths or you can’t”, “my brain isn’t wired up that way” “I’m more of an arts person”. We’ve all heard these sentiments many times. I’ve been speaking to audiences for many years about the links between mathematics and art, music, and literature, and trying to overcome these misconceptions. In my talk I’ll share some of my experiences of this, focusing mainly on mathematics and literature (including such curiosities as Oscar Wilde’s use of the fourth dimension and what Tolstoy has to say about calculus).

Moving pictures have an impressive power to capture the attention and to bring generalisations and new insights to mathematical pictures. Being able to control the movement yourself adds another level. Making maths move is more accessible than ever before thanks to freely available software, which means this has become an indispensable communication tool. We'll explore some dynamic visualisations, discuss their content and the tools used to make them (e.g. Desmos/Geogebra among others), and explore the pros and cons in mathematics teaching and outreach. 

The Royal Institution (Ri) charity has a long tradition of famous scientists, ground-breaking research and science communication. We will take you on a science communication journey through historical moments of Ri Mathematics Masterclasses and world-famous Ri CHRISTMAS LECTURES, showcasing some of our most engaging moments of mathematics. We will investigate ways to bring some magical moments of mathematics to curious school students and general audiences. 

Maths Week Ireland has been running since 2006 and currently engages around 500,000 people annually across the island of Ireland. It is a partnership of universities, institutions and other groups concerned with mathematics. The festival provides a vehicle whereby many different groups can engage different audiences with different activities for many different reasons. These reasons include amongst others: higher education recruitment, corporate social responsibility, enrichment, promoting educational attainment, supporting numeracy, communicating mathematical outputs, increasing research profile, etc. This presentation will pick some of these engagements and examine the motivations, modes of engagement and impacts. 

MathsWorldUK is a charity with a mission to change the public perception of mathematics through opening the UK's first national discovery centre dedicated to mathematics.  With support from across the UK and inspiration from global partners much has been achieved.  In this talk we will discuss the development of MathsCity which opened in Leeds in 2021, our future plans, and ways you might get involved - share the passion!

Mathematical models have been much in the news recently. They have been used to make predictions of the growth of Covid-19, to work out what is happening in climate change, and even to ‘predict’ A-level results. But how do we communicate both how these models work, and how reliable they are. Indeed how can we convince policy makers (who usually have limited background in mathematics) to trust them enough to use them for government policy. In this talk I will talk about how mathematical models are constructed and tested, how their uncertainty is estimated, and how this process can be communicated to a  general (and skeptical) audience. The talk will focus on my personal experiences of using mathematical models both during the Covid-19 pandemic, and also in Climate prediction.