We held our first and very successful Virtual Taster Day on Monday 22nd June 2020
This was the day that we had originally planned to hold our yearly conference Exploring Maths for Year 12 students on our lovely campus.
The day consisted of 6 short talks and a Q&A session. Many talks were interactive and the participants joined in through the live chat and polls.
The Head of Department, Prof Rüdiger Schack, started the day with a welcome, an introduction to our department, and a virtual tour through our beautiful grounds.
Professor Imre Leader (University of Cambridge) then delivered an entertaining talk about eating chocolate/playing Chomp and showed that there is a proof (by contradiction) that the first player can always win on a rectangle. Interestingly, the proof does not reveal a winning strategy for the first player!
Professor James McKee followed with an equally entertaining and interesting talk about the game of sprouts introduced by the late John Conway and Mike Paterson. It conveyed beautifully how relatively simple games or rules can quickly lead to open questions.
The afternoon began less playfully but was equally interesting and entertaining:
Professor Brita Nucinkis discussed the shape of space and encouraged the student to think not only about the universe but also about the consequences if we lived in 2 dimensions.
Professor Simon Blackburn brought us back to games with the game "NIM", discussing topics like binary representation as an aside.
Professor Jens Bolte followed and showed the fascinating connections between physics and mathematics.
The last talk was given by Hazel Jessop from the School liaison team about the UCAS process.
The final event was a Q&A session with the mathematics PhD student Joshua Coyston, the economics and mathematics undergraduate student Rashaine Weekes, and Professor Stefanie Gerke.
At the end of the day, the chat function was full of “Thank you's" from the participants.
Next year we hope to be able to welcome students back to campus but this event has shown that our enthusiasm for the beauty, challenges and fun of mathematics can also be shared virtually.
Please contact TasterDays@rhul.ac.uk with any questions.
