Ben Sparks gives Maths talk

News - Jul 21

On the 15th July, the Maths department invited special guest mathematician, public speaker and musician Ben Sparks to Colyton Grammar School to give a Maths talk. His performances are well known, with the Numberphile YouTube channel having over 16 million times. He also runs his own YouTube channel, SparksMaths.  

Year 7 and 8 watched a performance on Magical Maths, in which they discovered how quickly one can memorise a whole book, how to cube root very large numbers and how to magically arrive at an orange kangaroo from Denmark. Year 9 and 10 had a talk on the creation of numbers, starting with the discussion on whether numbers are discovered or invented, following how we extend numbers all the way to imaginary numbers through time, ending up with beautiful pictures like the Mandelbrot set.  

Students of all years were entirely positive and would like a similar session next year. Here is some of their feedback:  

‘I enjoyed the book and the mind control section best, because they were really interesting, got me thinking and it was satisfying knowing the answer’  

‘I was really, really good and I can’t believe that you can do that much with maths’  

‘I think that the next year sevens should do it because it is a way for people to look at maths a different way’  

‘I liked all of it, but my favourite parts were all the parts related to the people who’d been involved in the maths, controversies, murders, confusion, the stories’  

‘My favourite part of the talk was when we were talking about the question ‘where do numbers come from’  

As this event was so well received, we are hoping to bring Ben Sparks back to give a different talk to students next year, maybe making this a staple item in our school calendar.