Original article by Garrett Stell in The Herald here.

How many Big Macs would Charizard need to fuel a Fire Blast?

It sounds like the start of a generic word problem, the type deployed by many a maths teacher to get young people to sit up a little straighter in class.

Normally, name-dropping arguably the greatest Pokemon across all generations is just a bit of window dressing.

It’s an attempt to use popular culture to engage young people with maths, which is historically difficult and becoming more so.

But what if you can go one step further? What if there is an objectively correct answer to the question?

Or to the question, how many Pikachus are needed to power a light bulb? 

Or to the likelihood of catching a Pokemon under specific conditions for someone playing one of the many Pokemon video games?

It turns out, there are answers, and Oxford and Cambridge University lecturer Dr Tom Crawford uses them to make maths more accessible to the public, and young people especially.

Dr Crawford will be speaking on November 7 as part of TechFest’s “Scotland’s Digital Science Festival,” an online STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) initiative that introduces global audiences to science and maths.

His talk will show how practical mathematical questions and probability come into play every time a gamer fires up coding through the world of Pokémon. 

Dr Crawford uses his website and Youtube channel Tom Rocks Maths to make maths accessible and interesting in unconventional ways, and he said that he always finds using Pokemon triggers a powerful reaction in audiences young and old.

“The main thing I’m trying to do with my channel, which is my role at TechFest, is just to try and come up with new, creative ways of making applications of maths as fun, engaging and interesting as possible for young people.”

As a Pokemon fan himself – he has two Pokemon tattoos and had just powered down his Switch for our interview – he understands the hook that the games and anime have on audiences. But as a mathematician, he also understands how mathematics drives the core of every player’s Pokemon experience.

“As part of my talks, I get into a bit of the underlying algorithm in the game. For instance, when you’re trying to catch a Pokemon, there’s actually a probability as you might expect. You strategise about trying to make it more likely, but all of that has been written by mathematicians.” 

As an instructor, Dr Crawford has noticed some regular gaps in his students that he attributes to the unique way maths courses are structured. 

Unlike many other subjects that build on each other but are also more or less self-contained (for example, a Biology student may not necessarily be hampered by the fact that they struggle with Astronomy), maths is very much about building in sequence.

“That’s one of the problems with the subject, because if you have a particular problem or area that you aren’t interested in, or even if you’re just off school for a week or two, that makes the next bit really difficult because suddenly you’re missing a foundational brick in the pyramid.”

Using practical applications and popular culture bridge that gap and help people re-engage with maths, or kickstart their interest.

Unfortunately, Dr Crawford does not have a mathematical magic formula that will guarantee a catch. He can, however, illustrate exactly how each factor – such as the Pokemon’s HP, status effects, the type of Poke Ball a player is using and more – increases the probability of a catch.

And he can tell you how may Big Macs Charizard needs to eat in a day.

It may seem like a long way to go to create an engaging lesson. But Dr Crawford said that sometimes catching a students’ interest can be as tricky as corralling a wild Zapdos, and it feels like an uphill battle at times.

“There is an issue in the UK in general, where, for some reason, as a country we are very happy to admit that we are bath at maths. It’s a funny thing, because there are very few other situations where you would admit to being bad at something.”

“So I think the start, for me, if you are trying to get somebody to engage more with a subject, to be less scared of a subject, it’s about making them realise that they can do it and have been doing it all their lives.”