Alex James (Associate Professor in Maths from Canterbury University)
Alex discussed the innumeracy within our current world via history examples and journalist talk. She gave some prime examples of the exaggeration that goes on in our world which can lead to student confusion about key maths concepts. One example shared was using the notation of Olympic swimming pools to describe the amount of flood water that covered a region.
She raised the all important question - Are our maths programmes are encouraging students to continue to explore maths? She covered the need for maths tasks to be interesting, engaging and relevant to the student and shared Pascal's triangle using Excel as an example.
Alex also discussed the use of podcasts - More or Less from the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless) to help with posing interesting mathematical questions that students could research.
Some concluding questions Alex left us with:
Do we plan our curriculum to include the fun stuff?
How many of our students can use the maths software?
Can we lose just a bit of the content to encourage students to take just one more maths course or class?
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