A short review of intern Joe Double’s work with Tom Rocks Maths over the summer of 2018. Written for the OUS East Kent branch who provided funding for the project. 

‘First of all, I must thank you again for the grant, and for the warmth and friendliness at your event; it was an absolute delight to give my presentation and talk to your members, as it has been interacting with you in general.

I had the opportunity to work with one of my tutors over the summer to produce pieces for a general audience about complex mathematical topics. Without the help of the OUS East Kent group, I couldn’t have taken up this opportunity – with their grant’s help, I was able to afford to live in Oxford through a large part of the summer, allowing me to work in close contact with my tutor and use his studio for creating the videos and audio pieces I worked on. The OUSEK grant can be put to use far more flexibly than those from bigger schemes (which always have preconditions to meet about how the project will apply to industry, say), so I couldn’t recommend applying more if you have an idea for a project for your time at Oxford which is on the unusual side!’

Pieces I produced during the project:

Why do Bees Build Hexagons? Honeycomb Conjecture explained by Thomas Hales

A video I edited of Tom (my tutor) interviewing Thomas Hales about the mathematics behind beehives.

Would Alien (Non-Euclidean) Geometry Break Our Brains?

My main video, written, filmed and edited by me, about demystifying non-Euclidean geometry.

Take me to your chalkboard

My main audio piece, where I interview Professor Adrian Moore (also of St Hugh’s) about what philosophy can tell us about how aliens might do maths.

Maths proves that maths isn’t boring

An article about Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and how they show maths is always risky.

Getting tattooed for science…

An audio piece I edited about a tattoo Tom got of the Platonic solids.

Alien maths – we’re counting on it

An article about how we use the mathematics of prime numbers to send messages to the stars.

Play Nice!

An article about a game theory paper which could amongst other things help stop deforestation.

The original article was published on the OUS East Kent website here.