Maths inspiration for pupils and parents

It was a pleasure this week to welcome Zoe Griffiths from the organisation, Think Maths, to The King’s School to inspire our pupils – and their parents – with the wonders of maths. 

J3 and J4 pupils gathered in the Vanbrugh Theatre for an afternoon lecture entitled Freaky Probability.

Humans are generally bad at intuitively understanding probability, not because they are bad at maths, but because it is often counterintuitive. Through a series of audience games and activities, our pupils discovered that the chances were not always what they first thought before learning how maths can help them predict and understand the outcomes of both games and real-life scenarios. 

Drawing on familiar scenarios such as winning the lottery, birthday coincidences and coin flipping, there were regular gasps of amazement and realisation from the pupils throughout the lecture. 

In the evening, Junior School pupils were joined by parents and siblings, as well as Removes pupils and their families, for The Power of Patterns. 

The interactive, family lecture explored the power and place of patterns, including cube roots of large numbers and population data, via a series of exciting audience experiments. 

Zoe talked about how humans use patterns to make predictions and how we are generally very good at spotting patterns in the world around us, but that we are not always good at understanding what they mean and that they can even trip us up. 

David O’Neil, lead Maths teacher at King’s Juniors said: “We are always looking for exciting ways to take maths out of the classroom and show that it is relevant to everyone. 

“Zoe’s lectures were inspiring and lots of fun for the pupils, and we were delighted that so many parents at the evening lecture were enjoying engaging with maths together with their children.

“Thank you to Zoe and the team at Think Maths for opening our eyes to a new way of looking at mathematics. J4 pupils are now looking forward to MerryMathsmas, a special Christmas webinar with Zoe in December.

Zoe Griffiths is an expert in maths communication, regularly giving talks and lectures in the UK and overseas. She has also talked about maths on BBC Radio 4 and even performs mathematical comedy sets for adults. She is the creator of Inside Maths, a maths enrichment day, and has completed work alongside Maths Inspiration. 

Zoe is pictured here with some of the pupil volunteers from the afternoon lecture.