On Tuesday 27th November, girls from our Sixth Form in Year 12 and 13 attended a Maths inspiration talk at the Savoy Theatre, London.

Firstly, a scientist named Helen Picker declared her work in Science and how she surprisingly managed to link alphabetti-spaghetti to the human genome! Following her wonderful, but very peculiar talk about alphabetti-spaghetti, we were presented with the first guest speaker, Matt Parker. He explored various Mathematics mistakes that have occurred from McDonalds getting their combination number wrong to very serious matters like aeroplanes being filled with the wrong amount of fuel. He really showed us how precision and doing the right calculations to obtain an answer really matters.

Next up was Hugh Hunt who did a talk on Maths in Physics. He explained how outcomes such as the spinning top and bicycle wheel spinning when in the air and held by a string. He was very engaging and presented in a humorous manner which got us laughing while learning about geometric forces.

The last speaker, Ben Sparks, told us that Maths could be done just because it’s nice and how to win a bet. Obviously, he advised us not to gamble in the future, but if we ever come to the situation, he told us to ask ourselves two questions:

What are the odds?

How much are you paying for?

The talks were extremely inspiring and engaging and gave us an insight into how the outside world involves Maths.