Meet Leo – a second year Maths student at the University of Oxford who only discovered his love for the subject when at high school. In this short video for the St John’s College Inspire Programme, he explains his favourite parts of Maths and what he has enjoyed most when studying it at university.
Dan – 3rd year Oxford Maths student
3rd year Oxford Maths student Dan talks about his decision to choose Maths at university and the role models that helped him to get there.
BIG STEM Communicators Network
As a new member of the BIG STEM Communicators Network I was very pleased to be featured in the member spotlight for spring 2019. (The original article is ‘members only’ so I’ve copied the text below.)
“As a new member of the BIG community I would like to introduce myself as the ‘Naked Mathematician’ (yes you did read that correctly). I am a Maths Tutor at the University of Oxford with a goal to reduce fear and anxiety towards maths. One of the ways in which I do this is to take my clothes off – what better way to emphasise that the subject is not as serious and intimidating as many people think than by teaching in my underwear! The concept began as a series of videos on my YouTube channel entitled ‘Equations Stripped’ where I strip back some of the most famous equations in maths (and myself) layer-by-layer so that everyone can understand, and has since evolved into a live performance now touring universities across the UK. My efforts to bring maths to a new audience have been recognised by the University of Oxford, where I was awarded first prize in the Outreach and Widening Participation category at the OxTALENT awards, and I have also been shortlisted for the Institute of Physics Early Career Communicator award.
The ‘Naked Mathematician’ is of course not appropriate for every audience and as such is only a small part of the work that I do to share my love of maths. My ‘Funbers’ series was broadcast throughout 2018 on BBC Radio, where in each episode I look at numbers more closely than anyone really should to bring you the fun facts that you didn’t realise you’ve secretly always wanted to know… I also try to involve my audience in the creative process as much as possible by issuing a call for questions on social media and then hosting a vote to decide the topic of my next video in the ‘I Love Mathematics’ video series. Finally, I combine my love of sport with maths in my popular ‘Maths v Sport’ talk which features a live penalty shootout on stage and an attempt to break a running world record (appropriately scaled of course!).
All of the material that I produce is available for free on my website tomrocksmaths.com and associated social media profiles @tomrocksmaths on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. I am very excited to have joined BIG and look forward to working with the community to help to share STEM subjects with the world!”
Countdown Youngest Winner: Kai Laddiman
Kai Laddiman was the youngest ever ‘Octochamp’ on the gameshow Countdown when he was 11 years old, and also happens to be one of my students at the University of Oxford. I spoke to him about his experience 10 years on and put him through his paces with some of the number rounds…
Oxplore Live: What’s your biggest BIG question?
A very special Oxplore livestream as I’m joined by 3 Oxford undergraduates to discuss the biggest of BIG questions in celebration of Oxplore turning 50. Featuring gems such as ‘can we develop artificial intelligence without it controlling us?’, ‘what would happen if al of humanity were immortal?’ and ‘what was the best era or time period for humans to live in?’ Watch the video below and join in the discussion @letsoxplore.
