The first national Maths Week begins this month with events designed to show its more interesting face, writes Dick Ahlstrom
Ever wonder what maths has to do with a sunflower or the Da Vinci code or burning a hamburger on the grill? Students are invited to find out later this month when the first national Maths Week gets underway.
Dozens of events are planned as part of the week, which runs from October 16th to the 20th. The emphasis will be on making maths both accessible and interesting, says the national co-ordinator of Maths Week 2006, Eoin Gill.
The idea for the event came from Gill and from Dr Sheila Donegan, joint managers of Calmast, the centre for the advancement of learning of maths, science and technology based at Waterford Institute of Technology. It has taken on a life of its own, however, with the maths community north and south helping to make the week happen.
"We felt there was a need for a national maths week and there seemed to be great interest around the country. There has really been a groundswell amongst all the maths community," says Gill.
All the southern universities are holding events, plus Stranmillis University College in Belfast, Waterford IT, Dundalk IT, Dublin Institute of Technology and St Patrick's College, Drumcondra.
Sponsors include the Government's Discover Science and Engineering programme, the British Council Ireland, Ibec, Intel and Microsoft.
... "The purpose is to raise awareness and appreciation of maths amongst students, to try to overcome the negative things people have about maths," says Gill. The various talks and presentations to be held during the week try to take an unconventional approach to the business of teaching maths. Maths and music and maths and the weather will come up for discussion and how maths can describe the petals of a sunflower.
The week is keyed to the all-important date, October 16th, because of its associations with Ireland's greatest mathematician, William Rowan Hamilton. It was on that date in 1843 that in a flash of inspiration while walking along Dublin's Royal Canal Hamilton invented a totally new concept in mathematics, the quaternion.
Each year on that date the Royal Irish Academy, with The Irish Times and Depfa Bank organise the Hamilton Lecture, a talk by one of the world's leading mathematicians. This year's Hamilton Lecture on the 16th is by Princeton University's professor of applied and computational mathematics, Prof Ingrid Daubechies. And as it has for many years on the 16th, the maths department at NUI Maynooth has organised a commemorative walk, retracing the steps taken by Hamilton as he left his home at Dunsink Observatory and walked along the canal.
As ever, the organisers of the Hamilton walk have extended an open invitation to anyone interested in taking part. The walk is about three miles long and passes through pleasant countryside, and there will be tales of Hamilton, a Dubliner born in Dominic Street, who has been called the "liberator of algebra" given that his quaternions broke the confines of algebraic maths and set it free.
Talks on soap bubbles and another on sunflowers and pregnancy tests are organised by Macsi, the mathematics applications consortium for science and industry centred at the University of Limerick.
A full listing of events and venues for talks during Maths Week 2006 is available at the Calmast website, www.calmast.ie. The Hamilton Lecture takes place on Oct 16th in the Burke Theatre, Trinity College Arts Block, at 7.15pm. The lecture is free but places need to be booked via the Academy's website, www.ria.ie or by phoning the Academy on 01-676-4222. To take part in the Hamilton walk, contact Dr Fiacre Ó Cairbre in the Department of Mathematics, NUI Maynooth on tel: 01-7083763.