My wife’s school recently sent round a form with questions about “a day in the life” of people working in STEM careers, to show to their year 6 children. My job involves the M in STEM, so I agreed to have a go at describing my day.
I quite enjoyed describing about what I do, so I’ve decided to reproduce my answers here. Enjoy!
I regularly review resources written for pupils and teachers that in some way aim to support or extend Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. The most recent campaign in the UK is the Your Life campaign and as usual it has a website with short articles designed for teachers and pupils to browse and be inspired.
Imagine my excitement when one of the articles was called “Why Do Penguins Care About Maths?”. Two of my favourite things together in one article, there was even a video. I imagined something about penguins going North, then East then South on their quest for fish and ending up close to where they started. How does the problem change for a beady-eyed Rockhopper over a majestic (but slightly ridiculous) Emperor? How far does a penguin swim anyway? How do you map three-dimensional movement as it glides up and down under the water? So many possibilities for penguins and maths.
Hello. I’m Colin Beveridge and I’m stealing Christian’s round-up introduction, since we’ve had a handful of links of teaching and learning sent our way. Let’s get this show on the road!
Following on from the Maths Careers website’s ‘Mathematics of Planet Earth’ poster competition, I’m going on the assumptions that 1. everyone loves poster competitions, and 2. if they’re related somehow to a particular planet, that’s even better.
The Manchester branch of the British Science Association is running a competition to design a poster around a theoretical upcoming manned mission to Mars, describing some science that solves a problem the Mars lander might face. I think we should encourage people to enter mathematics-based posters (firmly wedging the M in STEM).
How much equipment would they need to carry, and how much would it weigh, and how much fuel would they therefore need? How does the addition of human cargo affect the landing trajectory? And what can the crew possibly use to keep themselves occupied on the long journey except some maths puzzles you’ve invented?
The competition is aimed at school years 7-9 (ages 11-14), and while it’s being run by the Manchester branch, nothing on the website says you have to be based in Manchester to enter.
In a blog post last week, Alex Bellos said:
It is often said that the reason Alfred Nobel did not endow one of his prizes in mathematics was because his wife was having an affair with a mathematician.
While this story has been debunked it is nevertheless frustrating to mathematicians, especially during Nobel week, that the noblest of the sciences is ignored by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
As an alternative, Alex offers the Mental Calculation World Cup.
A while ago, I wrote a flippant little piece in which I claimed that “Most of the Nobel Prizes are for Mathematics“. While perfectly valid and interesting mathematics takes place within mathematics itself, it is an interesting aspect of mathematics that its applications take place on the boundaries with, or even within, other disciplines. This creates some issues for those championing mathematics. Some people would like to assess the economic impact of mathematics but this is a difficult task. At what point does an application of mathematics belong to science, engineering or technology?
The point of the IMA Mathematics Matters series of articles, as I understand it, is to show where modern mathematics research has had its impact, even though that impact may be “perfectly hidden in its physical manifestation”. Some people would take the result of a piece of research to be “not mathematics” as soon as it finds an application. Unfortunately, defining a piece of work as ‘not mathematics’ as soon as it is applied is a way to ensure that all measures of economic value of the impact of mathematics are zero; yet it is clearly the case that much of science, engineering and technology would be naught without the mathematics that underpins it.
This is a balance we try to strike when finding stories for the Math/Maths Podcast; many interesting stories, and certainly those more likely to be written up by university press offices or the media, are those which apply mathematics in some other area. How far do we follow a story before declaring it “not mathematics” and turning our attention elsewhere?
It is with this mindset that I view the Nobel Prizes. Much of the work for which the prizes are awarded is underpinned by mathematics. I see ‘Nobel week’ as an opportunity for mathematicians to go in search of the mathematics behind each prize, rather than to retreat and complain about the lack of a prize specifically for mathematics.