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Getting tied up in knots, experimenting with bubbles, playing board games, doing origami, experiencing dimensions in virtual reality, exploring historical mathematical instruments and sorting out teddy bears. These were just some of the mathematical activities enjoyed by over 1000 visitors to the Oxford Maths Festival during the weekend of 11-12 May 2019.  

On the first day, Saturday, a group of staff and student volunteers from Oxford Mathematics and Oxford's Dept of Statistics were in Templars Square Shopping Centre in East Oxford. Shoppers were rather surprised to find themselves exploring playful and unexpected aspects of maths at the various stalls. Barney Maunder-Taylor, of House of Maths, had eager audiences of children for his highly engaging maths shows and the historical mathematical artefacts brought by the team from the Oxford History of Science Museum certainly caught the imagination. Shoppers were also able to don virtual reality headsets to explore dimensions or try out the many puzzles and mathematical curiosities on show at the different stalls. 

As a visitor said "It was inspiring & impressive to see people of all ages so engaged. All those running exhibits were ace at making maths accessible to all. The 4yo loved it, didn't want to leave & giggled his way through." And the student volunteers were equally pleased (and a little surprised perhaps) “The local people seemed to be really interested - the response is way more positive than I had expected.”

Saturday evening saw the action move to the Andrew Wiles Building, home of the Oxford Mathematical Institute, as teams raced to complete the first ever Oxford Mathematics Escape Room. They just made it in time for day two of the Festival, which saw around 600 visitors enjoy a range of activities in the Mathematical Institute. The team from the Oxford Maths Observatory (our secret maths lab) welcomed visitors on the famous Penrose paving with experiments giving a glimpse of the power of maths to understand bubbles. Once inside the building, children and adults alike could choose from a wide range of activities. The mathematical craft room was very popular, with a constant stream of participants wanting to try their hands at mathematical origami, curved stitching, mathematical braiding and mathematical colouring designs from books by Alex Bellos and Edmund Harriss. The board games were no less popular, with visitors able to play popular games such as SET, Hanabi, NMBR9, Tantrix and many more. Games designer Educational Games were on hand again with City of Zombies.

The OR Society team's Lego Factory was also very popular, and the student volunteers had their hands full all day with the Hands-on Family Maths activities, many from the NRICH website.  Matt Parker, of Numberphile fame, gave a typically witty and brilliant talk, and Kyle D Evans' Maths Madness family show received rave reviews. 

Local MP Anneliese Dodds clearly enjoyed herself: "After two days of intensive outreach activity (one of which I enjoyed today), I hope all involved with the ⁦@OxMathsFest⁩ are now putting their feet up! Great to see maths being brought to life for all ages."

Over the course of the weekend, over 65 staff and student volunteers were involved, in addition to all those who helped with the planning and preparation. One of the volunteers said “Most people think mathematics is really boring and that when you're studying the subject you just sit in the library reading some books without any real purpose. This event shows both us, mathematicians, and the participants that it can give you a lot of entertainment. Even if we encouraged just one person to do mathematics, that can really mean a lot for someone and change their life.”

Professor Alain Goriely, Director of External Relations for Oxford Mathematics said: "Mathematical knowledge is critical to the future of our society. But too often we are told that people's mathematical curiosity is lost at an early age. The Oxford Maths Festival is doing its bit to put that right." 

Perhaps the Oxford Maths Festival 2019 is best summed up by this visitor, who said: “Thank you for organising and holding such a wonderful event that promotes the importance and fun of exploring maths. My family had a fantastic time, and we can't wait for next year.”

Oxford Mathematics is committed to communicating the breadth and depth of mathematics to a wide audience, and the Oxford Maths Festival is fast becoming a central part of the offering for the local community. We are grateful to the supporters and sponsors whose help and funding enabled the event to go ahead: Mathematical Institute, Department of Statistics, Van Houten Fund, Olamalu and the Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund. We are also grateful to Barney Maunder-Taylor, Matt Parker, Kyle Evans and the OR Society, and to NRICH for the quality hands-on activities.

If you or your company are interested in sponsoring a future Oxford Maths Festival, then please contact Mareli Grady.

Oxford Mathematics Open Day Live Stream - 3 July

On 3 July we shall we live streaming our Open Day for prospective applicants as part of our going Behind the Scenes' at Oxford Mathematics. This is our way of making the Open Day 'open' to everyone, wherever you are.

The running order:
10.00am - James Munro introduces you to Mathematics at Oxford

10.30am - Vicky Neale on Pure Mathematics at Oxford

11.00am - Dominic Vella on Applied Mathematics at Oxford

AND

10.30am - we will be taking online questions

How to watch:

https://www.facebook.com/OxfordMathematics/

or

https://livestream.com/oxuni/mathsopenday

The films will remain available after the live stream and will join the student lectures and tutorial which are proving very popular on our Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel.
 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a great asset. Artificial Intelligence is a threat to our freedom. Much of the debate around AI seems to focus on these two positions along with a third argument, namely AI could never replicate our creativity or capture what makes us human. We will never go to galleries to look at AI paintings or read AI poetry.

Or perhaps we might? In this fascinating and provocative lecture, Marcus du Sautoy both tests our ability to distinguish between human and machine creativity, and suggests that our creativity may even benefit from that of the machines.

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

An old-fashioned tale of romance and estrangement, Graham Farmelo's Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture charts the 350-year relationship between Mathematics and Physics and its prospects for the future. Might things be less dramatic in future? Might they just have to be 'going steady' for a while?

Our Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are aimed at a general audience who are curious about maths and its many facets. They are all live streamed and available afterwards on our YouTube Channel. For a full list of forthcoming lectures please click here. You are all very welcome.

Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

Back in October, for the first time, we filmed an actual student lecture, Vicky Neale's lecture on 'Complex Numbers.' We wanted to show what studying at Oxford is really like, how it is not so different to school while at the same time taking things to a more rigorous level. Since we made the film available, over 375,000 people have watched some of it. 

Emboldened, we went one stage further in February and live streamed a lecture (and made it available subsequently), James Sparks on 'Dynamics.' But in addition to the lecture, we also filmed the subsequent tutorial which all students receive, usually in pairs, after lectures, and which is the essential ingredient of the Oxford learning experience. Both have been huge successes.

So we come to the third in our series of filmed student lectures. This is the opening lecture in the 1st Year course on 'Analysis III - Integration.' Prof. Ben Green both links the course to the mathematics our students have already learnt at school and develops that knowledge, taking the students to the next stage. Like all good lectures it recaps and points forward (the course materials accompanying the Integration lectures can be found here).

The lectures and tutorial are all part of our going 'Behind the Scenes' at Oxford Mathematics. We shall we filming our Open Days in July and more lectures in the Autumn. Please send any comments to @email

Oxford Mathematician Matthew Butler has been awarded the biennial Lighthill-Thwaites Prize for 2019. The prize is awarded by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications to researchers who have spent no more than five years in full-time study or work since completing their undergraduate degrees.

Matthew's research focuses on fluid dynamics, particulary flows at low Reynolds number involving surface tension and interactions with elastic boundaries. His talk at the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium 2019 where the prize was awarded was entitled 'Sticking with droplets: Insect-inspired modelling of capillary adhesion" and focused on how having a deformable foot can be beneficial when trying to adhere to a substrate using the surface tension of a fluid droplet. In his PhD Matthew is studying insect adhesion, and in particular how insects can utilise physical laws to improve their ability to stick to surfaces.

Oxford Mathematician Doireann O'Kiely won the prize in 2017 and Laura Kimpton, also from Oxford, won it in 2013. Oxford Mathematician Jessica Williams was also a finalist this year.

Oxford Mathematician Artur Ekert has been awarded a Micius Quantum Prize 2019 (Theory category) for his invention of entanglement-based quantum key distribution, entanglement swapping, and entanglement purification. The prizes recognise the scientists who have made outstanding contributions in the field of quantum mechanics and the 2019 prizes focus on the field of quantum communication. 

Artur Ekert is one of the leaders in the Quantum Cryptography field. His research extends over most aspects of information processing in quantum-mechanical systems and brings together theoretical and experimental quantum physics, computer science and information theory. Its scope ranges from deep fundamental issues in physics to prospective commercial exploitation by the computing and communications industries.

Oxford Physicist and close colleague of Artur's, David Deutsch was also awarded a prize in the Quantum Computation Theory Category.

The Micius prizes are awarded by the Micius Quantum Foundation. The Foundation is named after Micius, a Chinese philosopher who lived in the fifth century BC.

Far from taking us down the road of unpredictability and chaos, randomness has the power to help us solve a fascinating range of problems. Join Julia Wolf on a mathematical journey from penalty shoot-outs to internet security and patterns in the primes. 

Julia Wolf is University Lecturer in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge.

5-6pm 
Mathematical Institute
Oxford

Please email @email to register.

Watch live:
https://facebook.com/OxfordMathematics
https://livestream.com/oxuni/wolf

The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.

The recent votes in the House of Commons on Brexit are a type of high-dimensional data which is hard to understand, as each MP votes on several motions. Oxford Statistician and Mathematician Florian Klimm has illustrated such data as 'bipartite networks’, in which nodes represent either MPs or motions which are connected if an MP voted in favour of a motion. In this layout, MPs that voted similarly are close together. We can also explore how single MPs voted and how parties are divided or unified. We also see that motions that have the support of a similar set of MPs are close by each other.

For many research projects in applied mathematics and statistics, such visualisations are a first step to understanding complex data and forming working hypotheses. On a larger temporal scale, for example, we can investigate how political voting networks change over time, as this study on the U.S. Senate demonstrates.

Please click on the images to enlarge and click here for the interactive version.

Oxford Mathematician Jon Chapman and Visiting Fellow Mason Porter have been made Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

Jon is Professor of Mathematics and its Applications here in Oxford and a Fellow of Mansfield College. His research interests cover a vast range of the Applied Mathematics landscape including industrial mathematics, mathematical modelling, matched asymptotic expansions, partial differential equations, mathematical physiology, tumour growth and nonlinear models of biological tissue.

In the words of his citation Jon is being recognized "for his outstanding contributions to physical and biological modeling as well as for his asymptotic methods development in applied mathematics."

Mason is a former member of the Oxford Mathematics Faculty and remains a Visiting Fellow as well as holding a full-time position as a Professor of Mathematics at UCLA in the United States. Mason's work spans a wide range of interests including nonlinear science, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, nonlinear waves, quantum chaos, network science, social network analysis and mathematical biology. Mason was cited for his "contributions to diverse problems and applications in networks, complex systems, and nonlinear systems."