Codebreaking down barriers: maths PGR students lead immersive conference for schools

In January 2023 research students from the School of Mathematics led an exceptional maths conference for pupils in Years 8 and 9, organised by Further Maths Support Programme Wales (FMSPW).

The visiting school students were treated to a range of fun and immersive activities to draw their attention both to the history and to the modern applications of maths in their lives.

Research student Michela Corradini introduced the children to the hot topic of cryptography through Caesar cipher wheels as well as mono-alphabetic ciphers, demonstrating the enormous number of ways that humans have learned to decode and encode messages. Michela said "I loved running the workshops, he students really enjoyed decoding secret messages, and it was amazing to see that even the teachers got involved with it!"

"Playing games: An intro to game theory" led by Michalis Panayides led the students through 2/3rds of the average game, the prisoner's dilemma as well as repeated games, drawing attention to the best and most fun strategies to use in each case. Michalis remarked that “I just wish the students had as much fun as I did. I couldn’t believe how smart and resourceful some of these students were. Honestly one of the best experiences in my academic journey so far.”

Matthew Howells’ workshop "What are the chances of that?” gave students a basic introduction to probability theory, done using fun practical demonstrations including the Birthday problem, the lottery, and the Monty Hall problem. Matthew also shared that "I had a great time teaching these classes. The pupils all engaged really well and their reactions to finding out the probabilities of some things, such as winning the lottery, were priceless."

The Year 8 and 9 students all left the FMSPW conference having had an incredibly positive experience learning the impact of mathematics on their daily experiences, with Cardiff University research students equally having enjoyed sharing their knowledge and learning from teaching school groups.

The Further Mathematics Support Programme Wales is a Welsh Government funded initiative. The Programme started in 2010 in South West Wales and has gradually expanded to operate throughout all counties/regions of Wales. The aims of the FMSPW are to raise awareness among students and their parents of the value of studying Mathematics, and increase the number of students opting to study Further/Mathematics at AS/ A Level/University level.