More than 200 school students from the Central West and beyond spent time with mathematician Adam Spencer on Thursday for a day of puzzle solving and maths.
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Mr Spencer, who is also a mathematics and science ambassador for the University of Sydney, is a comedian, television personality and has been a breakfast radio announcer on Triple J and ABC Sydney.
But on Thursday, he was all about numbers and puzzles, “preaching the gospel of mathematics” to the students of the Central West at Charles Sturt University.
“For kids like this, getting outside the normal curriculum and pushing themselves normally excites them,” he said.
“I think mathematicians will build this century. We need a new generation of young, smart, mathematical minded kids to take on the jobs like encoding algorithms for jobs that haven’t been invented yet to sustain this country.
“If you’ve got mathematical talent, you’ve got to use it to stay in the mathematical sciences. We’ve got to stop using maths to get great marks and then go into law or other things. Maths for maths.”
Students were challenged in various problems including one where they had to use the numbers one to 30 by only adding, subtracting or square rooting fours.
“Some are simple maths problems that are a century old and others are ones that I’ve designed for my latest book that no students have tried before,” he said.
“We’ll be doing a couple hours of puzzle solving, problem solving and getting the kids together with other people they’ve never met and getting them to work their heads around different ways of thinking.
“Maths is great fun. I know people who say, ‘I don’t know anything about maths’ but they follow AFL football. They instantly know their six timetables. Six goals, five behinds, that 41 points.”
Students came from Kelso High, MacKillop College, Orange High and Canobolas Rural Technology School, as well as Crookwell and Goulburn.