This week I attended the event “Calculating Careers”, a mathematics careers fair at the University of Manchester. I found this a really enjoyable afternoon. I ran an IMA stall in a hall of stalls from employers. I thought a lot about how to run this. I didn’t want to come across as another employer that people wouldn’t have heard of. I wanted to project a different image.

I last ran a stall at another event in Manchester. This went okay but there were large periods of time where everyone was huddled at the far end of the room from my stall. I decided that what was needed for such a stall was something interesting to draw people in. Not that IMA leaflets and copies of Mathematics Today aren’t interesting, but they don’t necessarily draw people from across the room.

I spent some time with some mathematical puzzle books I have picked up in a discount bookshop earlier in the year and chose a few that seemed interesting. I made a little box and collected 2p pieces for a ‘fitting the coins in a box’ game, made some cardboard cut out puzzles and a lot of print outs of a topology drawing puzzle. These seemed well received by the students I met, and by some of my fellow stallholders.

I was told at the end by one of the organisers that every time he had been over, my stall had more people at it than the others. So there is something to be said for baiting mathematicians with intellectual curiosities!

Of course, I sent everyone on their way with a Maths Careers website postcard, a copy of “Careers for Mathematicians” by Sue Briault and many of them with information about the IMA, copies of Mathematics Today and even IMA application forms. Hopefully I made some students aware of the existence of the IMA, which is the battle I am trying to win.