The third group of essays from the 2022 Teddy Rocks Maths Competition come from entrants with surnames beginning with the letters E-H. The showcase will take place throughout May and June with the winners being announced at the end.

The competition was organised with St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford and offers a cash prize plus publication on the university website. It will be running again in early 2023 so be sure to follow Tom (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) to make sure you don’t miss the announcement!

Alessandra discusses how logical statements work in mathematics, and how they can be applied to our everyday lives to help to settle arguments.

Nathaniel explains how computers are used to prove mathematical statements such as the Boolean Pythagorean Triples problem.

Sasha braves the chaotic world of fractals and shows the link between the infamous Mandelbrot Set and the logistic model for population growth.

Davey looks at the symbolism of the Mad-Hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland and how it relates to the opinions of Victorian mathematicians at the time.

Ellie investigates probability theory with a statistical analysis of bus times and some real-life applications of Bayes Theorem.

Noah introduces category theory as a method to catalogue mathematical objects such as vectors, groups and rings.

Nikita untangles knot theory with several examples of how knot invariants can be used to differentiate between two objects – accompanied by photos of baked goods!

Keishi zooms in on fractals and explores what it means for a shape to have a non-integer dimension.

Oscar shares some research into the Collatz Conjecture and asks whether we will ever be able to solve problem.

Cougar debates whether we really need to teach more ‘real-life’ maths skills in school to improve financial decision-making.

Sofia investigates how inflation is calculated and how this could be mis-used for political gain in the US.

Alex shows how order can be found in the most unusual places – from the distribution of blood vessels in the lungs, to the links between rabbits and fractals.

Grace explains the ‘Painter’s Paradox’ and why it makes mathematical sense for Gabriel’s Horn to have a finite volume, but infinite surface area.