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Welcome to the February Newsletter

Spring is sprung! We are officially in Spring since the 1st February, although it seems that the weather doesn’t know it. February - April is Astronomical Spring which relates to the phase on the Earth’s orbit of the Sun. Meteorological spring relates to the warming weather and is considered March - May. Regardless, the days are getting longer and daffodils and other flowers are appearing so it is most welcome.

We would like to thank all our readers who attended the Robert Boyle winter school this year which celebrated Robert Boyles's birthday and explored Science and Art.

We would like to congratulate all our young scientists who participated in the BTYSE competition which was a fascinating display of young minds using maths, science and technology to apply creative solutions for the challenges of the modern day! There was a great range of projects in the competition with 17 strong projects from Northern Ireland including may related to maths.

There are also maths related events at Northern Ireland Science festival this month. See below for details.

In this issue

• Coming Events, Northern Ireland Science Festival and more

• News: BTYSE 2024 maths projects

• Maths Beyond the textbook with Douglas Buchanan

  
  

  On behalf of all the Maths Week team,

Eoin Gill

Maths Week Ireland Coordinator

This Month

South East Engineering Festival

This year’s festival will kick off with World Day for Sustainable Engineering on Saturday 2 and continue on to 8 March 2024. Engineers Week celebrates engineering across Ireland, with primary and secondary children as the target audience. The main aim of the week is to promote engineering - and to show the importance of the profession - to children in Ireland.

To Register your interest for the Upcoming South East Engineering Festival Click Here.

The Theme for this year is playing with Maths which taps into mathematical games, puzzles and other entertaining activities that help in exploring, experimenting, and discovering. It is an opportunity to explain and celebrate the essential role that mathematics and mathematics education play in breakthroughs in science and technology, improving the quality of life, empowering women and girls, and contribute to learning.

Get involved and participate. You can gain some ideas by looking at some of our puzzle ideas and resources here.

#IDM314

News

A Maths take on BTYSE

The 2024 BT Young Scientist & Technologist competition celebrated its 60th year and was held at RDS.

Sean O Sullivan from Colaiste Chiarain in Limerick won the overall prize for his project "VerifyMe: A new approach to authorship attribution in the post-ChatGPT era". We would also  congratulate St Mary’s College, Derry-Londonderry, best school in Northern Ireland and Colaiste Chiarain, Limerick for best school in the Republic of Ireland and to all the teachers, students and judges who made the event so successful.

There was a great range of projects in the competition related to maths, We were delighted to see Philippa McIntosh from Bandon Grammar School, Cork win the  Runner Up Individual prize for her project: “Beyond numbers: The textual challenge of Junior Cycle Maths for Dyslexic Students”. Philippa’s project analysed the readability of the Junior Cycle maths paper for dyslexic students, and how we can strive to improve it. The Stripe Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Award was awarded for the project "Generalisations of Marion Walter’s Theorem" by Sagnik Das, Sahibjit Singh from Christian Brothers, Synge St, Dublin.

Some interesting projects that qualified for the BTYSE competition explored concepts of "Maths of Dobble" by Sorca Soca Pearlmutter, from St Kilian’s Deutsche Schule, Dublin, who won 1st prize in the Individual Intermediate category and worked out how to create dobble decks for different sizes for a given set of parameters.
“Learning while playing gamification of mathematical concepts" by Bronagh Farrell and Sophie Connell from Meath St. Joseph’s Secondary School, Navan, Meath who worked on developing an app using Python to facilitate the teaching of Mathematical concepts through games. “Mathematics of Music: Music is in Everything”  By Emily Casey from St Andrews College, Dublin investigating patterns, similarities and differences between musicals when substituting numbers for every musical note. Projects also delved into topics of maths and games such as “Mathematical Model for predicting performance in Cricket” by Sachi Singh from Mount Anville Secondary School, Dublin which analysed cricket statistics to work up a metric-based model that indicates a player’s performance and contribution to a match outcome. “How Random is Chess” by Maire Flynn From Bandon Grammar School, Cork explores if chess moves are random or predictable and

“Using game theory to solve Catan “ by Eimear Nolan from Mercy Secondary School Mounthawk, Kerry which looked into using AI and game theory to win in the board game Catan.

Congratulations to all teachers and Students who participated this year.    

4th Young-ISA Meeting

The 4th Young Irish Statistical Association Meeting was held on 17th November and focused on the theme Researchers ’Toolkit: Publication, Progression, and People. Bringing together many career-young statisticians in Ireland and offering early career researchers and Ph.D. students an excellent opportunity to gain insights into advancing their careers in academia. The keynote speakers Brendan Murphy, Kathleen O’Sullivan and Carl Scarrott shared their perspectives on crucial aspects of their journey in academia. There were discussions and a round table on the significance of publication quantity versus quality, initiating collaborations, writing grants, how to progress in academia, and other relevant topics. More about Young ISA here

Maths Beyond the Textbook

Maths and the autistic child

One of the many rewards I receive hosting my maths challenges is catering for young mathematicians who are autistic. I cannot believe how well they adapt to a crowded hall with the continuous sound of children’s voices. And their success rate – excellent.

I suppose the challenges cover a few of the aspects listed below from Time4Learning:

• Identify your child’s interest and use it to teach math concepts.

• Capitalize on their visual-spatial learning style by using multimedia teaching tools.

• List out math facts so your child can easily refer to it whenever they need.

• Teach math concepts through visual examples and pair them with verbal instructions for those that are partially verbal or non-verbal.

• Make teaching math fun by playing games with flash cards, apps, or an online curriculum.

• Use technology to help those students whose fine motor skills aren’t as developed.

• Provide praise as often as possible to keep students motivated.

• Use multiple-choice format rather than yes or no questions.

  
  

Puzzle of the month

Cow, Goat and Goose (Henry Dudeney,1931)

A farmer found that his cow and goat would eat all the grass in a certain field in forty-five days, that the cow and the goose would eat it in sixty days,but that it would take the goat and the goose ninety days to eat it down. Now, if he had turned cow, goat, and goose into the field together, how long would it have taken them to eat all the grass?

Sir Isaac Newton showed us how to solve a puzzle of this kind with the grass growing all the time; but, for the sake of greater simplicity, we will assume that the season and conditions were such that the grass was not growing.

A TED TALK

Five ways to share math with kids

Creating a maths club

This is an ideal opportunity to involve pupils of all abilities to integrate and enjoy the solving of puzzles, learning “mathemagical tricks” and much more. On thirdspacelearning.com they list the benefits of having a maths club:

•          develop children’s knowledge and understanding of maths 

•          strengthen the cross-curricular links with maths and other subjects

•          provide children with opportunities to try new things

•          help children apply their maths skills to other ‘real-life’ maths investigations

•          celebrate the achievement of children

•          fuel a can-do approach to maths

•          show children that maths is multidimensional

•          develop children’s mathematical reasoning

•          promote collaborative learning between different year groups

•          develop maths resilience

•          boost self-confidence 

•          cultivate creativity 

•          Help to raise standards

•          increase parental engagement with maths

Many schools run the club as an after-school and others have it during the lunch break. As a starter pack, the same organisation had prepared a booklet of 12 games and activities. NRICH is another source. Whatwedoallday.com leads us to mathematical art activities.

Websites of the month

Fun lessons

Well, I believe all maths lessons should have an element of fun but many class the activities as “end of term activities” or “activities containing an element of fun!”

• Transum is a treasure trove when it comes to unusual approaches to maths-related sessions – mathemagic, paper construction andorigami, people maths, and online games.

  
  

• Thirdspacelearning described 25 activities which could make sound homework where the whole family can be involved. Logic stimulation!

  
  

The Giggle section

Oh dear!

Question: Why should you never mention the number 288?
Answer: Because it’s two gross

Question: Why are obtuse angles so depressed?
Answer: Because they’re never right.

Solutions to puzzles

Cow, goat and goose solution

As cow and goat eat 1/45 in a day, cow and goose 1/60 in a day, and goat and goose 1/90 in a day, we soon find that the cow eats 5/360 in a day, the goat 3/360 in a day, and the goose 1/360in a day. Therefore, together they will eat 9/360 in a day, or 1/40. So they will eat all the grass in the field in 40 days, since there is no growth of grass in the meantime!

Maths week will be back this year from 12th - 20th October 2024!
Stay tuned to our website and social media for updates!