math

Taster Sessions Update 11

JoelLeave a comment

For other messages in this series, see https://explainingmaths.wordpress.com/?s=Taster+Sessions

(This post to our Maths Taster Sessions Mailing List was dated November 30th 2021)

Our final pre-Christmas Taster Session will be on Wed Dec 8th 2021.

  • To join these events, you don’t need to register. Just visit our Taster Sessions page at https://tinyurl.com/uonmathstaster on the day and click on the relevant ‘Join event on the day’ button.
  • Wed 8th December 2021, 5PM
    Speaker: Alan Barker
    Taster Lecture on Fermi Estimates
    This talk will introduce the concept of Fermi estimates, which are a way of making surprisingly good approximations given very limited data and some general knowledge and common sense.  These are widely used by engineers and scientists, and are also very useful in other situations which might be met in day to day life. The ability to make such estimates is an important skill looked for by many employers.

Study with us: https://tinyurl.com/mathscourseuon 
Open Day maths talk videos:  https://tinyurl.com/uonmathsvod 
Maths taster sessions: https://tinyurl.com/uonmathstaster
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Taster Sessions Update June 6 2021

JoelLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

Slides from all 6 of our recent Maths Taster Sessions are now available from the Taster Sessions web page, https://tinyurl.com/uonmathstaster
Meanwhile, we are continuing to post videos from these sessions on that page and on the School of Mathematical Sciences YouTube channel, https://tinyurl.com/uonmathsyt
(It takes me a while to correct the auto-generated captions!)

The latest video available is from Peter Neal’s Taster Lecture (11/05/21) on Probability. This video is available on YouTube at https://tinyurl.com/uonmaths110521

I am currently correcting the captions for Tom Wicks’s Taster Lecture on Problem Solving, so that should be ready soon.

University of Nottingham Maths Taster Sessions: two announcements

JoelLeave a comment

This post has two parts:

1. Our next event

2. Slides and video on demand

Tags: #mathematics #maths #math #appliedmaths #university #nottingham #calculus #covid

1. Our next event

Our next event, which will be the last in our current series of Taster Sessions, will be a Taster Lecture on Applied Mathematics by Stephen Creagh, at 5PM on Thursday 3rd June 2021.

Applied mathematics is all about constructing models of the world around us, in contexts as diverse as mechanics, pandemic modelling or weather prediction, and then solving the resulting equations. Calculus is the central language of this modelling cycle. Typically, our mathematical models take the form of differential equations, in which the governing equations tell us about the rates of change (derivatives) of the quantities we are interested in.

In this taster lecture we will explore qualitative and graphical approaches to understanding the solutions of these models. These qualitative approaches often give really good insight into the problem while demanding much less effort than would be needed for complete solutions in the form of explicit formulas. For example, in modelling a pandemic, we might be much more interested in answering questions such as whether infection numbers will rise or fall, whether they will approach an equilibrium or keep changing steadily, and if rising, what parameters might be changed to make infections fall etc.

For full details of our Taster Sessions, see the page

https://tinyurl.com/uonmathstaster

To join one of our Teams Live events, simply visit that page at the right time and use the session’s Join Teams Live Event button.

2. Slides and video on demand

Slides from the first five Taster Sessions in the current series are now available (in PDF format) from the page https://tinyurl.com/uonmathstaster. Videos from our sessions will be available on demand from the same page once the captions are ready. So far you can watch videos from the first two sessions, which are the Taster Lecture on Calculus by Anna Kalogirou from 29th April 2021, and the popular maths talk Using maths in the fight against Covid-19 by Katie Severn from 6th May 2021. You can also find these videos on our YouTube channel, available at https://tinyurl.com/uonmathsyt