International Maths Challenge

  Have you ever struggled with teaching statistics? Do you and your students share a sense of apprehension when data lessons appear in the scheme of work? You’re not alone. Anecdotally, many teachers tell me that statistics is one of the topics they like teaching the least, and I am no exception to this myself. In my mathematics degree, I took the minimum number of statistics-related courses allowed, following a very poor diet of data at school, and carried this negative association into my teaching. Looking back on my career in the classroom, I did not do a good job of teaching statistics, but having had the luxury of spending many years at Cambridge Mathematics immersed in research from excellent statistics teachers and education academics I now understand why! So now, of course, the question has been posed. Why is statistics hard to teach well? In part, I believe that it stems from viewing statistics through a mathematical lens – understandably, given that we are delivering it a...

  Math education outcomes in the United States have been unequal for decades. Learners in the top 10% socioeconomically tend to be about four grade levels ahead of learners in the bottom 10%—a statistic that has remained stubbornly persistent for 50 years. To advance equity, policymakers and educators often focus on boosting test scores and grades and making advanced courses more widely available. Through this lens, equity means all students earn similar grades and progress to similar levels of math. With more than three decades of experience as a researcher, math teacher and teacher educator, we advocate for expanding what equity means in mathematics education. We believe policymakers and educators should focus less on test scores and grades and more on developing students’ confidence and ability to use math to make smart personal and professional decisions. This is mathematical power—and true equity. What is ‘equity’ in math? To unders...

  All a i  lie on the same sheet of a cone with vertex x. The right-hand picture is not true to scale relative to the given numerical example. Credit:  Advances in Applied Mathematics  (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.aam.2024.102741 The summer holidays are ending, which for many concludes with a long drive home and reliance on GPS devices to get safely home. But every now and then, GPS devices can suggest strange directions or get briefly confused about your location. But until now, no one knew for sure when the satellites were in a good enough position for the GPS system to give reliable direction. TU/e’s Mireille Boutin and her co-worker Gregor Kemper at the Technical University of Munich have turned to mathematics to help determine when your GPS system has enough information to determine your location accurately. The research is published in the journal  Advances in Applied Mathematics . “In 200 meters, turn right.” This is a typical instruction that many ha...