MathsJam 2023 - Weekend of November 11th/12th

Tickets that include accommodation now sold out.

Tickets that do not include accommodation are now available.

If you need a residential ticket, email us for the waiting list.

Here are this year's talk submissions. This ordering is provisional and may be subject to change.

SATURDAY

SESSION 1a 14:00-14:40

Speaker : A - MathsJam Team
Title : Welcome to MathsJam
Abstract : Introduction and welcome

Speaker : B - Peter Rowlett
Title : Am I related to Henry VIII's Master of the Mint? Are you?
Abstract : Peter explores the maths of genealogy and his own links with Ralph Rowlett, Master of the Mint in 1543.

Speaker : C - Alyssa Burlton
Title : MathsJam Presentation Presentation
Abstract : What makes the perfect MathsJam talk? Armed with an anonymised dataset from last year and some rusty statistics, I attempt to find some answers.

Speaker : D - Michael Gibson
Title : A Talk You Will Either Love Or Hate
Abstract : A woman has two children. One of them is a girl. What is the probability that the other one is a boy? What if, instead of being told "one of them is a girl", we are told "one of them is called Susan"? Does this change the answer? This "apparently simple" probability question has intrigued me for years, and has recently led me to consider a concept I will call "Marmitivity". I will share my thoughts on this with you in this thankfully brief talk. You will either love it or hate it!

Speaker : E - Fredrik Kirkemo and Ida Soland Thu
Title : The Rubik's Dice
Abstract : There are many magic tricks with Rubik's cubes and there are many magic tricks with dice. But there is a trick that brings the two worlds together. Our Rubik's dice are cubes with carefully numbered sides, that can be twisted and mixed so it's impossible to know anything about the numbers on the sides around the cube. Or so it seems. In this talk we demonstrate this trick with both a 2×2×2 and a 3×3×3 cube.

Speaker : F - Sam Hartburn
Title : Ten to the Top, but Nine to the What?
Abstract : Radio 2's morning music quiz has an interesting scoring system. I've analysed the possible scores to try to work out how fair it is.

SESSION 1b 15:10pm-15:50

Speaker : A - Jørn Hafver
Title : A(I) useless robot
Abstract : Live training of an AI image recognition model. Using model to control a micro:bit that will trigger something amazing.

Speaker : B - Ben Ashforth
Title : Road Trip
Abstract : How a talk at last year's MathsJam inspired me to make a journey which I had started planning 18 years earlier

Speaker : C - Alison Kiddle
Title : Guess who doesn't belong
Abstract : Let's play two games; "Which one doesn't belong?" and "Guess Who?" and take a look at the underlying maths that makes the games work!

Speaker : D - Phil Ramsden
Title : Sliderules II: the Kolmogorov Connection
Abstract : Three years ago I gave a talk about generalising the idea of a sliderule. This is the sequel, in which I show how a small adaptation sets up an unexpected link, and reveal how Andrey Kolmogorov scooped my previous talk by ninety years.

Speaker : E - Daniel Johnson
Title : From Numberblocks to Polyominoes
Abstract : What does a heartwarming Cbeebies show have to do with using binary words to count shapes?

Speaker : F - Tarim
Title : Illogical Song Lyrics
Abstract : Some song lyrics don't always make sense

SESSION 1c 16:20-17:00

Speaker : A - Hugh Hunt
Title : Pi Pong
Abstract : You'll have maybe seen on youtube that pi can be computed by counting the number of collisions between unequal masses. This is an excellent video explainer[->] and here's an article by Colin Wright on the same subject[->]. OK, it's fine in the maths but has anyone ever tried to do the experiment for real? Does it work? Let's see!

Speaker : B - Robin Houston
Title : Simpler Substitution for Spectres
Abstract : The world is abuzz with talk of new aperiodic monotiles: the hat and the spectre. I particularly like the spectre. The spectre paper explains how to understand the structure of spectre tilings in terms of a system of nine regular hexagons with marked edges. But this system is quite intimidating. It turns out you can actually do it with five: I’ll give a sketch of how that works, with lots of nice pictures.

Speaker : C - Luna Kirkby
Title : Buz: A Fizz Buzz Story
Abstract : Luna presents a rapid-fire history lesson: What is Fizz Buzz? Some of Fizz Buzz's weirder variations; and Where did this Fizz Buzz thing come from anyway?

Speaker : D - Donald Bell
Title : Rectangling Squares and Rectangles
Abstract : Can you tile a square with several rectangles that have no repeated side lengths? And can you tile TWO different rectangles with a set of rectangles that have no repeated side lengths? And can you make a nice multi-solution puzzle from rectangling rectangles?

Speaker : E - David Hartburn
Title : How to avoid zombies
Abstract : Why is it difficult sometimes to avoid people on wide paths, when there is clearly space for everyone to pass?

Speaker : F - Nessa Carson
Title : Molecules that barely exist
Abstract : Chemistry is driven by the release of energy and enthalpy (or chaos... very broadly speaking). Some of the most reactive organic chemistry works by reactively releasing strain within a molecule. This strain comes (again, broadly speaking) from electrons that are forced away from their geometrically-perfect orbitals. I'll be playing with Molymod kits that I think represent the geometries of molecules very well - just at 10^24 of their scale!

SESSION 1d 17:30-18:10

Speaker : A - Sammie Buzzard
Title : Spurious mathematical claims? How much of Antarctica is really penguin pee?
Abstract : "3% of the ice in Antarctica's glaciers are penguin pee" - a claim I was made aware of at a previous Gathering, and one which I finally decided to use my glaciological and mathematical knowledge to put to the test.

Speaker : B - Colin Graham
Title : Know your place!
Abstract : Many of you in England may have been exposed to a perculiary English activity known as "change ringing". This is mostly associated with churches in the Anglican faith, with some Episcopalian churches elsewhere in the world also being participants. There is a good deal of mathematics involved in how bells are rung in order to produce all of the possible combinations/permutations. Could you memorize 49,001,600 different combinations when only pairs of bells can change position? I will tell you how it can be done!

Speaker : C - Tom Briggs
Title : Secret Histories: Spotting the Hidden Maths in Museums
Abstract : A museum isn't the first place most people would expect to find mathematics, but that's not because there isn't any there.

Speaker : D - Alexander Bolton
Title : Abundant Numbers
Abstract : Abundant numbers, e.g. 12, 60, 360, are useful as they have many factors. I will show how common these numbers are and how to find them.

Speaker : Saturday night tables
Title : Elevator Pitches
Abstract : A chance to find out about the activities on offer on Saturday evening

Saturday Night Tables 8-9pm and 8.30pm-9.30pm

SUNDAY

SESSION 2a 08:45-09:30

Speaker : A - Matt Parker
Title : Calculating Pi by hand
Abstract : Matt talks about plans to break the world record for most digits of pi calculated by hand. And how you can help!

Speaker : B - Bob Huxley
Title : When is Pi Day on Mars?
Abstract : Earthlings celebrate Mathematics on March 14 (3.14) or July 22 (22/7). What's the Martian equivalent?

Speaker : C - Annette Margolis
Title : Our preferred way of solving a quadratic is
Abstract : I will be setting a quadratic to solve in class and each group will argue why their way is the best. The talk will be the results of this informal poll.

Speaker : D - John Hoskinson
Title : Beyond Diffy Squares
Abstract : What happens if we apply the rules for Diffy Squares to other Polygons

Speaker : E - Alistair Bird
Title : Speaking truth to powers
Abstract : In 1937, a mathematician suddenly leapt out of his mineral bath, rushed naked into the adjoining room, and began to scribble figures. We’ll talk about what he wrote, and what it can teach us.

Speaker : F - Adam Atkinson
Title : DOCTIAL
Abstract : Thanks to recentish developments in Misère Games, Adam deduced the existence of and his membership of DOCTIAL and hopes that some people in the audience will discover that they, too, are members even though they've never heard of it.

Speaker : G - Harlan Connor
Title : Winning the loudness war
Abstract : I will show how some simple maths leads to some surprising (and loud!) results in signal processing.

SESSION 2b 10:00-10:45

Speaker : A - Alex Arthur
Title : A Sleepy German Village with an odd fountain
Abstract : In September I visited France. I went to Strasbourg and saw an interesting fountain. It feels quite mathsy, but is it? Let's explore this fountain.

Speaker : B - Tony Mann
Title : An amusing magic square
Abstract : I will present an amusing magic square (at least, it amuses me)

Speaker : C - Gavan Fantom
Title : Meet the Flight Computer - a glorified slide rule
Abstract : Although modern electronic tools are available for flight planning, pilots are still taught how to plan flights using a mechanical Flight Computer - a circular slide rule on one side, and an ingenious vector calculator on the other. Join me for a practical demonstration of this (nearly) century-old device and some of the calculations it can do quickly and efficiently.

Speaker : D - Miles Gould
Title : Surprising turns
Abstract : A lathe is like a potter's wheel for wood or metal, allowing the user to create parts with circular symmetry about an axis. But with a small modification the lathe can produce a completely different family of shapes. This talk tries to answer two questions: "How the heck does that work?" and "Where have we seen this before?".

Speaker : E - Vanessa Madu
Title : An Alternative Approach to Mathematical Modelling
Abstract : There are lots of precise, rigorous, and inspired ways to construct a mathematical ocean model; I will not be talking about any of those. Instead, we will discuss a method born in the depths of my struggle to pull together my master’s dissertation; an alternative approach to mathematical modelling.

Required: at least 4 rubber ducks (which will be provided) Optional: access to the North Pacific Ocean.

Speaker : F - Joey Marianer
Title : The True Prisoner's Dilemma
Abstract : Plenty of people have intuitions about the Prisoner's Dilemma. Let's throw a little bit of a spanner in the works.

Speaker : G - Andrew Taylor
Title : Rotating an image without rotation
Abstract : A demonstration of a graphic trick used by some old videogames, which manages to rotate an image using three shears. It's a lot faster than "real" rotation, and while it can look a little fuzzy, it has a couple of nice properties.

SESSION 2c 11:15-11:55

Speaker : A - Matt Peperell
Title : Showing off my curves
Abstract : Most of us will be familiar with the conic sections and the trigonometric functions. In this talk, I will explain some of the lesser known curves and their uses in the world around us.

Speaker : B - Pedro Freitas
Title : A 19th century lottery - with a deck of cards
Abstract : We present a lottery system, conceived by a Portuguese scholar, that uses a deck of cards as a means of implementation (collaboration with Jorge Nuno Silva).

Speaker : C - Ben Handley
Title : How square is a circle?
Abstract : Jay Foreman has a video (https://youtu.be/8mrNEVUuZdk) about finding the squarest country. But how can we judge the squareness of a shape? What happens when we try to find the squareness of a simple shape like a circle?

Speaker : D - Hannah Gray
Title : Gender in the Groove: Are Half Our Tunes Topped by Dudes?
Abstract : An off-hand comment when playing Heardle led to an investigation into whether 50% of songs are sung by men.

Competition Results - MathsJam Bakeoff

Competition Results - Competition Competition

SESSION 2d 12:25-12:50

Speaker : A - Adam Townsend
Title : Differential equations make pretty moving patterns (and now you can too)
Abstract : When mathematicians want to talk about things that move and change, we talk about differential equations: heat spreading out in a room, sheep herds moving to fresh fields... Biologists have known for ages that when you have two competing populations both trying to spread out, the fun really starts. Modelling this was Alan Turing's day job, and what took him six months to compute, we can now do on our phones in real time. There are so many rich, pretty, dynamic, surprising patterns that you get from relatively straightforward equations and this last year I have been part of a team building a website that instantly solves equations like this in the browser (think Desmos but for partial differential equations). In this talk I'll show you just how cool these solutions are.

Speaker : B - Clare Wallace
Title : Skittles: count the rainbow?
Abstract : Packaging says all sorts of nonsense: "it's not for girls", "only smarties have the answer", "every packet of Skittles is unique". They're all different kinds of wrong, but the Skittles one is the worst: it's mathematically wrong. Obviously we're going to work out how many different packets of Skittles there are. Obviously I've bought tons of Skittles. Obviously you'll get the chance to eat some.

Speaker : C - Colin Wright
Title : The Moebius Rollercoaster
Abstract : Some rollercoaster rides are described as "Moebius" ... where's the twist?

Speaker : D - MathsJam Team
Title : Wrap-up and thanks
Abstract : Final session to wrap up the event and thank everyone

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MathsJam 2023 - Weekend of November 11th/12th

Tickets that include accommodation now sold out.

Tickets that do not include accommodation are now available.

If you need a residential ticket, email us for the waiting list.