On 3 December, over 40 More Able and Talented (MAT) pupils from eight schools journeyed to Techniquest for a maths workshop, hosted by mathematician Alison Eves and astrophysicist Dr Stuart Eves from the Royal Institution.
During the masterclass, the group — comprised entirely of year 5 and 6 children — were introduced to more advanced mathematical principles than they were being taught at school, such as probability puzzles and pi (and its many applications).
Catrin Evans, headteacher of Ysgol Gymraeg Cwmbrân, said: “It’s a brilliant opportunity for the children to learn about a subject that really interests them in a more challenging way.
“One of my pupils even said they like being challenged because it forces them to think even harder about solving a problem.
“They’re also learning to work with children from other schools in an environment like this, which will prove valuable in the real world.”
The children learned that pi is a truly random sequence: first, they were each given a sheet of paper with the first 2000 digits of pi and were told to point out any interesting sequences they found.
Following that, they got to use mypiday.com, a website which showed them far they had to go before their birthdays appear in the infinite sequence — the furthest birthday in the room was more than six million digits out!
To finish, the class were introduced to William Jones, the Welsh mathematician who was the first to use the Greek symbol 𝜋 to represent pi, and Buffon’s needle, a famous probability problem which figures pi into its solution.
Alison Eves said: “In our culture, we don’t celebrate maths in the same way we celebrate some other aspects of learning.
“People think of maths as stuff you just learn in the classroom, something very rigorous — a set of rules that you have to learn — whereas you miss then the whole beauty and the importance of the subject.
“I think the masterclasses are trying to give young people a glimpse of that beauty, and of the depth and breadth of things that people don’t realise are mathematical.”
We would like to thank the Royal Institution, Dr Stuart Eves, and Alison Eves for the delivery of the masterclass, and the eight schools who took part.