S2 E1 - Communicating Maths Effectively with Ben Sparks

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Hello and welcome to this episode of season two of Digging for the Why, the podcast for maths teachers where we explore thoughts behind asking why.
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I'm Andy one of your hosts and as usual I'm joined in the virtual education world by Alison.
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How are you this morning Alison?
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I'm very well Andy, very much.
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I was going to make a play on Oasis Education there from Ready Player One, but then I realized that there are loads of schools in this country that are in like Oasis Education, maths and stuff.
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And I didn't want them to think we were singling them out.
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So I didn't say it, but then equally I have just said it.
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So there you go.
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Anyway, we're not in Ready Player One.
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We should be.
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The world would be a much more exciting place.
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For today's episode, we are joined by a mathematician, a musician and a public speaker.
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No, no, no, no, not three people.
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Just one superhuman who manages to juggle all three different bits of his life.
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And as we've just learned off off camera, off camera, off recording all parenting thrown in there as well.
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So today we welcome Ben Sparks into the maths pod land.
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Ben is the aforementioned mathematician, musician, and public speaker.
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He gives math talks and workshops around the world to students, teachers, and the general public.
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He's a little bit freelance and a little bit part time with the AMSP, and he's based out of the University of Bath.
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You may know him from his work with Numberphile on YouTube.
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He also has his own YouTube channel, which is called Sparks Maths.
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Now, I first came across Ben years ago when I was teaching.
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We used to go to the math inspiration lectures.
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run by Rob Easterway and Stand Up Math's Matt Parker.
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And they're brilliant.
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And I saw Ben several times and he always had his guitar and, and me being a guitarist as well.
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It's just amazing to see him on stage.
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So it's great to have him here.
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Welcome today to Digging for the Y.
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Ben, how are you?
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Thank you very much.
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I am, I am well, although I'm definitely not.
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Either three people or a superhuman just just get it out there I'm, definitely a human struggling to juggle all three rather than some sort of like superhumaning it
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sounds very familiar Very familiar adulting.
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I like to call it Yeah, exactly So, As, as you guys know that are listening, we've changed season two up a little bit and this year is about just trying to discuss some kind of common questions with our guests about digging for the why and where they've come across this idea of asking why in their careers and lives and, and what's brought them here and why they've done it.
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Potentially regretfully agreed to come on the podcast and talk to us.
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So first one is a kind of common question that we're asking people, Ben, and in the last couple of weeks, what's happened to you to make you ask why
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it's a good opening question though, isn't it?
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Cause it's nicely specific instead of trying to put big picture ideas out there, I was like, right, what did I ask?
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Why recently?
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In, in the last week to really narrow it down, I was at a conference.
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called Communicating Maths for the Public, run by the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, and the whole conference was about communicating maths, obviously, for the public in the sense of public sector mathematics communications to governments to regulatory authorities as well as people who are kind of popularizing and enrichment maths and so I've been asking this week a lot of why do we talk about maths to anybody let alone teach it why do does the government need to know a bunch of maths why do statistical authorities try and tell the government a bunch of maths and how do they do that in a way that people understand it so It feels a bit like it's been a bit of a meta week because why do we do the jobs we do as a teacher?
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I why is this subject important?
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Isn't it?
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I've been thinking a lot about and why do they, why do people not hear it?
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Why do people not listen?
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Even if you give them good mathematical advice or teach them good tools to use.
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So there's, there's a big meta communication questions rather than just why this maths exists.
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I don't know if that answers your question, but are you happy with that?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Like it's just, it's.
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When we were, you know, before, when we were planning kind of this season, we're thinking of what questions to ask.
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Cause last year we were a lot more focused on very specific things with each guest.
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You know, they were, they were in on the podcast for a reason.
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And this year we wanted to open it up to people just in the maths world.
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So we were like, well, let's just ask them, you know, what's made them ask why?
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Because everyone that's coming on.
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Is it with the reason that we've chosen people that we would like to come on the podcast is because we know they do have this thing about asking why, you know, so think, think of described scratches, superhuman with all the different things that you do.
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And you know, what, why do you do what you do now, you know, what's the journey been like for you to get to being public speaker, doing work for university, you know, talking at conferences, things like that, what's led you to that and how, you know, how has, why influenced your career as a word and as a kind of question.
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Why are you what you are?
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Is that what you're saying?
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I mean,
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it's
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a bit deep for a mathematician on a Friday morning, but you know.
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Well, it's interesting when people ask you your job, like, you know, it's the, it's the, maybe the typical taxi cab conversation is like, Oh, so what do you do if you're on a longer than expected taxi journey?
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And I've resorted now to just say I'm a math teacher which is not accurate, but it's an easier thing to explain to say a taxi driver than this sort of ins and outs, but I do genuinely think of myself more In that light, there's nothing else that as a math teacher, I did 10 years teaching secondary maths in schools alongside some other stuff by the end.
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But that's where my sort of passion lies is communicating, but I've got enough of an egotistical streak that it becomes a little bit performancey as well, and that's kind of what I've ended up doing, but why do I do?
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I, I like, I like the pedagogical experience of, of taking people through interesting ideas.
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That, that, I mean, it's, That's the short story.
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The long story is that I taught Maths for a long time, and it's hard, as a lot of people listening know, and teaching Maths is busy.
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And I increasingly tried to do some other stuff that I really enjoyed, which is this performance y stuff, on the side when I first got an opportunity to do it.
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So it was way back when the AMSP didn't exist, it was called the Further Maths Network.
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2005 or 6 I think we're at now, and A colleague and friend, in fact, ex teacher of mine from school days, I was working at the school where I went to school, bizarrely.
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It happened to be the Further Maths Centre for the area, and Jo Sibley, who still works for MEI, was organising a maths outreach conference, and she said, To this young, newly qualified teacher at her school come and do a workshop.
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So I wrote a talk or a workshop and I've been using sort of the bare bones of that talk and workshop ever since.
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So that's, you know, it's getting on for 18 years ago.
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I think it's a little bit frightening.
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It has changed somewhat that workshop.
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I hasten to add, if you look at the original slides I wrote, I, well, I should burn them before anyone else sees them, but that was a starting point.
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And I realized that I, you can tell people's stories about mathematics That maybe are worth telling even if the details are not going to be on the exam.
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And that's been a bit of a recurring theme for me is that I feel very lucky to be someone who gets to talk about bits of my subject because they're worth talking about and not just because someone else has decreed that this is going to be part of an assessment.
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I'm not anti assessment.
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I think we should assess things and that determines a lot of what people see as valuable, but there are things which will never be assessed that are still worth discussing.
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And I don't think any teacher will blame me for enjoying that aspect of my role now.
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I get to get to choose the bits to talk about which feel like they're worth talking about, even if no one else was going to tell me to.
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I don't know if you want one more details about the journey, but that that's the sort of motivating thing behind it.
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No, I like, I like that.
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We, we used to have, um, what did we call them?
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I can't remember.
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Oh, like a carousel basically of non curriculum lessons for year seven.
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And you would, you would devise something and take it round.
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And over the year, every year, seven class would experience all four, basically of the different kind of lesson or experiences, whatever it might've been.
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I was going to say lectures, but it certainly wasn't a lecture.
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And it was great because the, the, the kind of the brief was this cannot be on the year seven curriculum.
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Can't really be in key stage three, but it needs to be linked to maths.
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Yeah.
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And it was like, okay, that's kind of cool.
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And then, and I think I've mentioned it before in this podcast I did.
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Like combinatoric stuff about going to cinema sitting in different orders And then linked it to premier league fixtures And how does the fixture machine work and how we have algorithms but we have to put rules in place so that things don't you know You don't play the same team twice and all this kind of stuff and and just to try and get the kids recognizing that You know maths is throughout and then it was those those kind of those kind of lessons Those sessions were great to generate like But Mr Lumley, why, why does this happen or why does this happen?
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All they'd sit there and go, Oh, so is that why it's always home and then away at the start of the season?
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And you'd be like, yeah, that's, you know, that's what they do.
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And this is how it all works.
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And if you just left it completely random, well, it wouldn't be random.
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And then I bring out.
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One of my favorite random quotes ever of Steve Jobs talking about the iPod and how people complained that the same track would attract from the same artist would play twice in a row.
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And he said, so we had to, you know, when you press random, it's not random guys, because we've had to cheat the code and cheat it because you don't actually want random because people don't get what random really means, you know,
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to be less random, to feel more random.
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Exactly.
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And it's that kind of thing and anything like that, which can inspire kids to just think about.
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The maths that they're learning or the life that they're living or the things that they come across and, and do that, you know, so no, I, I, as a, you know, a former teacher, I appreciate that.
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Like you said, there isn't that time in the classroom to do all those things that you want to do.
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And that's a hard, hard, hard sort of fact of the world of teaching.
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Yeah.
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And that's, you know, from our secondary experience.
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And I guess we've talked about it before, but similarities in the primary sector, right?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And I was talking to with, working with a group of teachers on Wednesday, on 5 to 8 actually going back to what we, what we talked about last time.
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But they were sort of, there was this, they're driven by the curriculum.
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They're driven by getting kids to the right place at the end of year 6, getting kids to the right place at the end of year 11.
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And I think for, when I was in the classroom, I used to, To try to, within that remit of we've got to get over this, these bits of curriculum so that you're able to sit in that room in May and not feel completely lost, but to, to try to paint sort of broader brush strokes across the curriculum.
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I think that's what we came down to talking about on Wednesday with this group of teachers and saying, you know, If we're teaching an understanding of multiplication, you know, how many different things can we hook onto that understanding and I was going around my head today has been an idea of a calculation and thinking of all the problems that that math problems, that that very simple division calculation might be solving, and it could be something to do with percentages.
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It could be something to do with ratio.
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It could be a direct proportion and scaling problem.
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All of which can be quite compartmentalized.
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And I think I, we used to do similar things on these carousel days where we'd, we'd say, go and do something fun.
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And you think, well, hang on a minute, it should all have an element of fun.
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I know fun isn't the key thing, but if we're not leaving maths lessons with a sense of, oh, that was interesting.
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Oh yeah.
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Quite enjoyed doing it.
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Oh, I never realized that connected with that.
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It is important, isn't it?
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Oh, she's gone.
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We will carry on.
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She will come back.
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Too profound for the podcast to cope with it.
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I was going to comment that the.
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The idea of fun like let's do some fun things as opposed to the normal things.
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Like every teacher has a sort of slight ambivalent reaction to that, I think, because yes, we want to make it fun, but that like, is it not fun to learn just stuff anyway, but the serious comment I think is that nobody, kids or adults does anything without some motivation.
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And pretending they do is just completely like false, but the motivation could be someone's threatening you because you must do this or else, or.
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You must do this to pass this exam, or you want to do this because you want to do this.
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And, like, choosing to do a chore, for example, might be because your life would be worse if you didn't do the chore but choosing to watch TV or watch a film is because you want to.
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And choosing to study maths, like, anytime it ever happens is because someone has some motivation, which could be the teacher inflicting their will or reminding them there's an exam.
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Or it could be that they want to study it, or some probable combination of all of these subtle things.
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But I think paying attention to that as teachers is always important, and occasionally trying to mix up the motivations that are available helps.
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So exams are important, and wanting to do well because there's an assessment coming is not a silly idea.
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But if that's the only reason you ever study a subject, it will feel different from whether, from all my, you choose to study it because you're just really, really fascinated by that particular picture.
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And it, I guess the educational vocab out there is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
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Does the task you're asking someone to do.
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Or the task you're doing yourself motivate you in itself.
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That'd be the intrinsic idea or is something from outside making you want to do it.
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It could be a threat, do it or else, or it could be a bribe, do it.
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And you'll get a sweet, like those, those methods work, but if that's mixing it up is really helpful and it's not just about teaching.
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This is about any of us doing anything, thinking about why we do it.
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It's quite insightful to, to realize how you get other people to do it or how you share things that need sharing.
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Okay.
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So.
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I'm going to ask you about blending kind of bits of your role together.
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So I've, I've seen you at mass inspiration.
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So when you're, when you're planning a session for mass inspiration, you're I guess providing some kind of external motivation to hopefully feed into an internal motivation for the students to go, Ooh, this has caught me here, you know.
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And I, I've brought different schools to those lectures and I've brought different levels of students and students who are doing maths because they absolutely love it, everything about it.
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They want to know more.
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They want to read books about it.
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To the student who's gone I've got to do maths because You know?
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And it's like, okay, and they're all coming and it's like, we're going to these lectures or why do you have to go to a lecture about maths when I, you know, as in fellow maths teachers are all going, it's really good.
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And they're going, you're a maths teacher.
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Of course you think it's good.
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Of course you think it's entertaining.
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It's like, no, trust us.
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And then it's getting them there.
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And then they have these sessions, whether it's you, whether it's Rob, one of Rob's sessions whether it's Hannah doing one of hers and you just watch these things and the kids come away infused by it, so how do you How do you figure out what your session is going to be?
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How's the structure going to be?
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And how does that compare to delivering a session at university?
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You know how if you're in a classroom?
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Yeah Like how how can you apply similar things where you just want the students to leave with an enthusiasm a curiosity?
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Whether that is a lecture whether that is a session like that whether it's a lesson in school, you know It's a big question.
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What are the similarities?
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I think it's trade secret.
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Does that, does that short answer?
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I'm not, I'm not telling you, no, that's an unhelpful.
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Thank
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you, Ben, for coming on the podcast
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today.
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I like any teacher, lecturer or presenter.
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This is hard.
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It's a subtle thing.
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But let me, let me try and get my thoughts in order here.
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It's perfectly possible for a mass inspiration talk, which for context, if anyone's not seen it, usually in a theater rather than a classroom between 500 and a thousand in the audience on a stage with.
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Lighting and music and things.
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It's not some sort of like rock star show, but it's also not a classroom.
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And that's quite important.
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So first of all, the atmosphere is not one of here's a revision session.
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They're also not on home territory.
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They've gone, it's an event, it's a visit, it's a trip.
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And that is really significant because I think it changes the atmosphere.
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Even if, as you point out, the expectations of, We're going to a maths lecture doesn't necessarily they don't know what to expect, but already if they're in a theater and there's background music, that's not awful, and the lighting is sensible and the projector works, these things, these things are important.
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And without those things, the atmosphere would be much more like we're in a sort of tired classroom or assembly hall.
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So although I don't like that feels superficial, it is important and pretending it's not.
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Realizing the lighting's broken and you say, Oh, it doesn't really matter.
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It does matter.
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But once you've got that, then you are in a position where the students are a bit more like, Oh, this is an event, but it does need to feel professional.
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I guess this is what I'm really saying here.
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At that point though, it's perfectly possible to present some content to them.
00:16:27.096 --> 00:16:31.576
As long as it's delivered carefully, you know, with performance technique, that's not terrible.
00:16:31.615 --> 00:16:32.995
You can deliver them academic content.
00:16:33.046 --> 00:16:37.216
You can tell them how to solve an equation from a stage if you're careful about it.
00:16:37.706 --> 00:16:39.035
But you can also, I think.
00:16:39.385 --> 00:16:42.035
More easily because of the atmosphere created.
00:16:42.035 --> 00:16:44.035
You can just show them which something, which is worth showing them.
00:16:44.365 --> 00:16:46.826
And you can say, look, let's just do this because it's nice.
00:16:47.255 --> 00:16:49.956
And so designing a session for mass inspiration is.
00:16:50.681 --> 00:16:53.561
In some sense it's very like designing a classroom session.
00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:59.250
You figure out what you want to tell them, and you figure out why, and you figure out who the audience is, and how to get those ideas across.
00:16:59.250 --> 00:17:01.211
And if you don't ask those questions, you're asking for trouble.
00:17:01.321 --> 00:17:03.311
It might work anyway, but likely not.
00:17:04.010 --> 00:17:14.490
But in this case the audience is teenagers, they're there on a school trip, there's a bit of atmosphere, you have a little bit more permission to show some spectacle, and that's when you should show them some spectacle.
00:17:14.500 --> 00:17:19.911
Like you should wheel out the the big punchlines, or the, the sort of, the high points.
00:17:20.101 --> 00:17:25.760
Because that's the things we don't always have time to deliver in the classroom, let alone prepare to do.
00:17:25.861 --> 00:17:29.701
So maybe Maths Inspiration has a responsibility to show the greatest tits.
00:17:30.701 --> 00:17:34.990
What's the, there's a Math Petitioners Lament by Paul Lockhart, I think.
00:17:35.050 --> 00:17:36.181
I forget, I didn't.
00:17:36.576 --> 00:17:37.375
Look up the details.
00:17:37.675 --> 00:17:40.855
Famous essay about how maths feels maybe from the outsiders.
00:17:41.885 --> 00:17:48.806
It's like if all you ever teach is like the techniques of mathematics, it's like teaching someone to paint, but all they ever do is paint fences.
00:17:49.276 --> 00:17:53.635
Like, fine, but maybe you should take them to the Louvre.
00:17:54.096 --> 00:17:55.855
Like, show them the greatest hits.
00:17:55.865 --> 00:17:57.425
Show them the great works.
00:17:57.605 --> 00:18:00.976
And then, and that is as true in mathematics as it is in painting.
00:18:01.736 --> 00:18:05.016
But when did we have time to show the great works of mathematics in classroom?
00:18:05.105 --> 00:18:05.566
Yes.
00:18:05.826 --> 00:18:08.806
If you're a mathematician and you're aware of them, you want to, it's hard to find time.
00:18:09.026 --> 00:18:11.826
Maths Inspiration maybe should take that role, or things like it.
00:18:12.631 --> 00:18:22.340
So that's, that's the first thing, try and find the things that, right, we can show them here in an atmosphere which wasn't available, wasn't as easy to provide in a classroom, so that's important.
00:18:22.441 --> 00:18:30.411
But then, in my situation I'm, I'm not on the mass inspiration, mass inspiration list because I, like, I'm an engineer who built a bridge to space.
00:18:31.181 --> 00:18:32.980
If I was, I'd be there to talk about that.
00:18:32.980 --> 00:18:40.671
And so, so Paul Shepard, for example, is an engineer, University of Bath, and talks to them about designing all sorts of shapes for stadiums he's worked on.
00:18:40.681 --> 00:18:44.300
Yeah, I've seen that talk, it's unbelievably interesting.
00:18:44.810 --> 00:18:46.911
But he's got a very focused reason to do what he does.
00:18:46.921 --> 00:18:55.780
And I feel a bit like, oh, it's nice to have less of the obvious topic to talk about, but also harder because then you have to choose what to talk about.
00:18:56.320 --> 00:19:04.131
And in the ones you may have seen me talk about, I've ended up Framing it all in the context of a song, which is completely and utterly shameless.
00:19:04.141 --> 00:19:12.490
Like I don't get to play in public unless I make it happen, but I play a guitar and I sing, but I'm not a very good parody comedy maths musician.
00:19:12.490 --> 00:19:15.221
I can't play a funny song with some math lyrics.
00:19:15.270 --> 00:19:16.891
Other people can and really, really well.
00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:18.060
Kyle Evans, for example.
00:19:18.766 --> 00:19:23.036
excellent musician, also funnier than me, and makes sort of fun math songs out of it.
00:19:23.046 --> 00:19:30.615
Whereas in my context, I wanted to pick up on the idea that music has this sort of rationale behind it, which we don't question.
00:19:30.645 --> 00:19:32.026
We do it because we like it.
00:19:32.175 --> 00:19:33.776
We do it because it's nice.
00:19:34.036 --> 00:19:38.625
There's no reason why we feel like music has to be useful, and no one really is worried about that.
00:19:39.165 --> 00:19:43.171
In But we also do maths for the same reason.
00:19:43.171 --> 00:19:45.881
It's just that everyone's also saying, yeah, what is, what's it for?
00:19:46.121 --> 00:19:53.090
So, by putting a piece of music, unashamedly, which is just a piece of music, which I like, you get to talk about maths being like that.
00:19:53.260 --> 00:19:58.435
I also then end up choosing bits of music which have lyrics which, Mention things I want to talk about.
00:19:58.546 --> 00:20:02.016
And then it provides a sort of artificial framework to hang a talk about.
00:20:02.076 --> 00:20:04.195
And any good presentation needs some sort of structure.
00:20:05.256 --> 00:20:12.115
The first one I wrote for Mass Inspiration with Rob was based on the song, The Shape of My Heart by Sting, which is about a poker player.
00:20:12.286 --> 00:20:19.455
And one of the verses talks about the sacred geometry of chance and the hidden law of probable outcomes, numbers leading a dance.
00:20:19.715 --> 00:20:19.846
And.
00:20:20.290 --> 00:20:25.221
Literally all I did was take that verse and put each line as the title of one segment of the talk.
00:20:25.320 --> 00:20:32.810
And then suddenly we've got a structure and I get to show some really nice bits of maths that also kind of get drawn together by the song at the end.
00:20:32.810 --> 00:20:38.590
And then, then you play it and sing the song at the end, which, which is always potentially David Brent level shameful moment.
00:20:38.921 --> 00:20:41.691
But I think there's something to be said.
00:20:41.691 --> 00:20:43.411
It like, if you're making a spectacle of it.
00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:48.020
And then you actually go through with something which has got a little bit of jeopardy about it.
00:20:48.171 --> 00:20:49.461
A live piece of music.
00:20:50.141 --> 00:20:51.790
Live music's interesting because there's jeopardy.
00:20:52.181 --> 00:20:55.320
That's at least partly why live things are interesting.
00:20:55.461 --> 00:20:56.461
What if it doesn't work?
00:20:56.461 --> 00:20:58.530
Like, there's no, there's no fallback position.
00:20:58.530 --> 00:21:01.161
That makes everyone sit on their seats, magic tricks, gambles.
00:21:01.500 --> 00:21:05.030
Music, there's something about that frisson of, ooh, is this gonna work?
00:21:05.945 --> 00:21:09.826
And if you're not awful, then you come across looking quite good.
00:21:10.195 --> 00:21:10.816
So who knows?
00:21:10.846 --> 00:21:20.405
I have been awful at music on stage before now, but if you're not awful, then that's a nice way of celebrating the spectacle as a slightly rambling answer there, but
00:21:21.526 --> 00:21:21.796
all right.
00:21:21.806 --> 00:21:24.036
So how often does the guitar come out in the lecture theater at Bath?
00:21:24.621 --> 00:21:28.990
Very rarely, actually when my, it's very confusing figuring out who I work for these days.
00:21:29.030 --> 00:21:33.840
I do, I'm employed by the university of Bath, but only because the AMSP gives the money to employ.
00:21:34.750 --> 00:21:44.830
So I worked for the advanced math support program and I happened to be funded via the university of Bath, but then occasionally the university of Bath asked me to do some things for them.
00:21:45.211 --> 00:21:51.101
And so I do teach on one course at the university of Bath, but it's not a maths module, it's a mass communication module.
00:21:51.131 --> 00:21:52.711
It's for third year undergrads.
00:21:53.480 --> 00:22:02.010
Who have chosen to do a half year module on how to talk about math or how to present math or how to write about maths, which I think actually is a really interesting course.
00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:02.800
It's very unusual.
00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:04.211
There's one other course in the country.
00:22:04.211 --> 00:22:05.480
I think that does it on a maths degree.
00:22:05.891 --> 00:22:06.941
I think there are more coming.
00:22:07.361 --> 00:22:10.310
Chris Bud set this up many, many years ago and has been running it for a long time, but it's.
00:22:12.290 --> 00:22:13.590
I haven't played my guitar at them.
00:22:13.621 --> 00:22:21.881
I have pointed out that I use music in mass communication, but the poor sods on this course don't very often have to put up with me actually playing at them.
00:22:22.671 --> 00:22:23.951
Probably much to their relief.
00:22:24.621 --> 00:22:35.881
So, assuming that's more of a lecture style of a session kind of thing, how are you planning those sessions to, to again, enthuse them?
00:22:36.171 --> 00:22:37.701
Like you say, you know, I Do
00:22:37.701 --> 00:22:39.480
you mean these university mass communication course sessions?
00:22:39.490 --> 00:22:39.750
Yeah.
00:22:40.221 --> 00:22:44.280
So I, I've, you know, whenever I've gone to Mass Inspiration, it's at the RNCM in Manchester.
00:22:44.530 --> 00:22:46.721
Those lecture theatres are set up for sound.
00:22:46.721 --> 00:22:47.560
They're set up for music.
00:22:47.570 --> 00:22:49.721
That's the whole point of the, you know, the Royal Northern.
00:22:50.151 --> 00:23:05.520
So that's like, say you can provide the wonder, the spectacle, and you know, as long as it's kind of, you play it properly and you don't mess your chords up and you have words and all that kind of stuff, then it's going to, kids are going to go, cool, you know, and even if you do mess it up a little bit, they're going to go, ah, this is, this is fun.
00:23:05.730 --> 00:23:10.290
So then you're in a lecture theatre, I assume, and you're delivering a session to third year undergrads.
00:23:11.500 --> 00:23:21.851
How are you going to apply some principles from your spectacular lectures to a less spectacular, I would assume?
00:23:22.250 --> 00:23:22.530
Yeah,
00:23:22.921 --> 00:23:29.191
particularly because it's a bit meta, because I'm trying to explain to them how to judge Spectacle and how to design this, pretty much what you're asking now.
00:23:29.191 --> 00:23:40.641
So it's very meta, but there are a few principles which are going to sound pretty cliche, but things like show don't tell, like you can, you can tell people about stuff, but if you have an option to show them the stuff that you're telling them about as well, or instead of.
00:23:41.175 --> 00:23:42.096
You should probably do it.
00:23:42.536 --> 00:23:53.256
And there's an extreme example of this, but in the course at the university of Bath for these students, it's actually surprisingly hard to get that in action because you're stuck in a lecture theater and it isn't a spectacle thing but YouTube exists.
00:23:53.286 --> 00:23:59.675
And so there are videos of good things and that's quite now a really important part of the course, you can show other people who've done something on video.
00:23:59.715 --> 00:24:02.076
And in fact, for that course, we asked them to.
00:24:02.570 --> 00:24:04.391
Make a piece of content.
00:24:04.411 --> 00:24:07.671
So it might be a video or write an article and so that they can recreate some of that.
00:24:07.800 --> 00:24:09.221
Actually, I'll say a bit about the course.
00:24:09.221 --> 00:24:11.090
They, they have to deliver something live.
00:24:11.181 --> 00:24:16.891
We usually use the Royal Institution masterclasses around the country and they go off in groups as undergraduates to deliver one of those.
00:24:17.601 --> 00:24:20.121
If you don't know about the masterclasses, Saturday morning, a couple of hours.
00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:33.050
self selecting audience, usually of year eights or nines or tens, really interesting context to learn how to present very different from mass inspiration, but also very different from a classroom and watching them go and design a session and then mess it up.
00:24:33.750 --> 00:24:36.131
Cause that's how you learn stuff is important.
00:24:36.151 --> 00:24:37.611
Like they've got to have a chance at trying it.
00:24:37.611 --> 00:24:39.121
And that's what I think the value of that module is.
00:24:39.401 --> 00:24:48.971
We then also get them to create some content, maybe a video, maybe an article, maybe a school placement, which is a very different thing, but Then they get a chance to make those things.
00:24:49.151 --> 00:24:56.931
However coming back to the other like, you can tell them all these things about good advice, but unless you actually do it, that was my first point, it's very hard to learn this stuff.
00:24:56.931 --> 00:25:00.201
So the main value of that course is they have a chance to do stuff.
00:25:00.530 --> 00:25:10.651
And as we always point out, to mess it up and reflect on it, which is like the big skill for all of us, teachers, presenters, anything, you've got to do something and reflect.
00:25:10.871 --> 00:25:11.881
Otherwise, it won't get better.
00:25:12.230 --> 00:25:13.740
And so we try and get them to do something.
00:25:13.750 --> 00:25:26.601
And that, in that case, show, don't tell, like we tell them what to do, give them some advice and then they go and do it and like, okay, right now, you know how it feels, but in a slightly different aspect to that, the show don't tell advice in terms of making a spectacle.
00:25:27.161 --> 00:25:29.391
Or learning how to, to sort of reinforce your point.
00:25:30.300 --> 00:25:33.471
There's a good thing, which I've seen Matt Parker do very well.
00:25:34.280 --> 00:25:44.010
And I've tried to do it as well, but is this, if you have an idea, which you want to tell someone about, cause it's exciting and you tell them details, then you should consider actually showing them the thing instead of just telling them about it.
00:25:44.010 --> 00:25:51.570
And that's the show don't tell, but you should also look out for moments where you say in your head, someone's explained a thing that you're like, would that actually work?
00:25:52.181 --> 00:25:53.431
Could we actually do that?
00:25:53.830 --> 00:25:55.510
Particularly if it's an extreme idea.
00:25:55.881 --> 00:26:06.500
Because then if you're in the position of planning a spectacle moment, which is less of the run of the mill everyday thing, like you're going to make a high point here, that's the time then you actually do it if you can.
00:26:06.570 --> 00:26:17.441
And so Matt Parker, for example, let's say he was looking at the idea that you can make a a menger sponge, which is a fractal, a cube with a whole drill through every sort of dimension and then all the way down.
00:26:17.441 --> 00:26:20.030
So you've got a fractal structure, really nice mathematical object.
00:26:20.050 --> 00:26:21.020
And like, well, could you make one?
00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:23.260
No, because it's a fractal structure and it's infinitely.
00:26:23.681 --> 00:26:26.310
Holy, but can you build a model out of a card?
00:26:26.310 --> 00:26:26.810
Yes, you can.
00:26:27.020 --> 00:26:29.230
It turns out you can build them out of business card things.
00:26:29.230 --> 00:26:30.570
You make little cubes and you slot them together.
00:26:30.631 --> 00:26:34.090
And and then, then you look at, well, how big can you make it to simulate the fractal?
00:26:34.131 --> 00:26:35.070
And so Matt was like, well.
00:26:36.661 --> 00:26:38.550
Can we break the record of how big you can build this?
00:26:38.550 --> 00:26:39.641
And so you actually build it.
00:26:39.641 --> 00:26:46.730
And so there was a project now getting on for eight, nine years ago, 2014, I think it was, the Mega Menga.
00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:55.310
And so around the world, people were building Menga sponges out of business cards over a million business cards around the world built into this huge sort of level four fractal.
00:26:55.540 --> 00:27:00.721
And it has that sense of spectacle because someone who's got the decision to make it like, could we actually do this?
00:27:00.790 --> 00:27:01.030
Yes.
00:27:01.060 --> 00:27:02.010
Let's make it happen.
00:27:04.080 --> 00:27:10.391
That's a big deal, that it makes it a memorable thing, and it's not something you can do on a day to day basis, but you look out for the opportunities where you can actually do it.
00:27:10.701 --> 00:27:11.961
But it works on a smaller scale too.
00:27:11.961 --> 00:27:15.540
I'm going on about it now because I'm getting excited, but the other extreme, this still works.
00:27:15.550 --> 00:27:20.221
So I saw a really good example of a friend and colleague of mine also works for Mass Inspiration from time to time.
00:27:20.411 --> 00:27:23.340
I was chatting to him this morning about an engineering project called Hugh Hunt.
00:27:23.961 --> 00:27:25.230
He's an engineer at Cambridge.
00:27:25.711 --> 00:27:28.770
He does good talks about spinning things, boomerangs and gyroscopes.
00:27:28.851 --> 00:27:33.090
But he got invited on the great British menu TV show where they're cooking stuff, right?
00:27:33.141 --> 00:27:36.141
But the, this series was celebrating great inventors.
00:27:36.330 --> 00:27:39.750
And he got invited as a guest judge to talk about inventions and taste some food.
00:27:40.300 --> 00:27:43.891
But Hugh, in his irrepressible style, couldn't resist, like, doing some demos.
00:27:44.060 --> 00:27:52.361
So there's a one minute clip of him talking to the other guest and celebrity judges about why toast falls butter side down when you drop it off the table.
00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:57.520
Absolute classic case study of a piece of cliche mathematics slash physics.
00:27:58.230 --> 00:28:05.230
But in this one minute, he does a really good example of, like, telling the details, explaining some of the maths, but choosing whether to skip the gory detail.
00:28:05.621 --> 00:28:07.560
You've got a minute, you skip the gory detail at that point.
00:28:07.921 --> 00:28:16.181
But explaining that it lands butterside down because of a coincidence of gravity, time from a tabletop to the floor, and the amount of rotation it gets when it falls off.
00:28:16.911 --> 00:28:23.770
But then he says this lovely thing, it's like, of course, if the table was a lot higher, like four times higher, then it would have more time and therefore would land probably butterside up.
00:28:24.730 --> 00:28:32.300
And in that heartbeat when he says that, what I think is happening is the entire audience, including the judges in the room, are like, really?
00:28:33.296 --> 00:28:33.836
I want to see that.
00:28:34.786 --> 00:28:44.625
And then the heartbeat passes on, and they've done a really nice edit, and you see Hugh standing on the table, also on a chair, to hold the toast four times higher than it was, and pushing it off a plate.
00:28:45.445 --> 00:28:53.665
And lo and behold, it does a double flip, lands butterflies up, everyone cheers, and we've made a spectacle out of something, but it's a little tiny picture of what mathematical models do.
00:28:53.695 --> 00:28:54.425
They make predictions.
00:28:55.320 --> 00:28:59.851
And then you kind of forget that sometimes you need to say, wait, let's see if it actually works.
00:29:00.131 --> 00:29:05.770
And that's a really lovely part of a pedagogical cycle that we quite often miss is like, does it actually work?
00:29:05.961 --> 00:29:11.931
Can you do a sort of artificial or contrived version of actually trying it and making a spectacle out of it?
00:29:12.010 --> 00:29:12.871
It's a good habit.
00:29:13.401 --> 00:29:15.181
If you ever think, is it actually gonna work?
00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:16.691
To think about whether you could make it.
00:29:17.306 --> 00:29:18.036
Actually work.
00:29:18.855 --> 00:29:20.506
I think that that touched on too.
00:29:20.506 --> 00:29:54.611
I, I, I, well, if, if you could have seen, I, I, I grinned when you said Hugh, because I actually just pulled up something that went back to seeing the greatest hits that Hugh wrote for an MEI publication a few years ago, which I'll, I'll come back to, but I think what, what, what I, what I think is a frustration for a lot of teachers at the moment, goes back to what I was talking about, this, this drive through the curriculum, very tight planning is that we're missing teachers asking those questions that, that, that perhaps through the Maths Inspiration Lectures, there's the, the sessions, there's the, the opportunity in the planning to ask those questions.
00:29:54.651 --> 00:29:58.631
And also the people picked, like yourself, Ben, are people who think in that way anyway.
00:29:58.631 --> 00:30:05.661
But I wonder if there's a missing step that, you know, we're talking about digging for the why in terms of students and pupils digging for the why, but.
00:30:05.881 --> 00:30:10.260
There's a sense of teachers digging for the why in the pedagogies that they're using in the classroom.
00:30:10.260 --> 00:30:14.770
I think that we're, that fits, that fits, that needs to fit into this somewhere.
00:30:14.770 --> 00:30:23.060
And I think, you know, with the workload issues in, in, in schools at the moment, that just seems, we seem to have squashed that out of being a teacher.
00:30:23.740 --> 00:30:25.730
I agree that a lot of it is a workload problem.
00:30:25.961 --> 00:30:30.881
You just don't have time and creative energy to craft the spectacle, the high points that actually do it.
00:30:30.911 --> 00:30:32.921
And that's a difficult thing to solve.
00:30:32.921 --> 00:30:33.941
I don't have an answer for it.
00:30:34.540 --> 00:30:35.641
There was another problem though.
00:30:36.506 --> 00:30:43.496
Just to sound really pessimistic, is that I think you have to have a mathematical confidence and awareness in order for those questions to occur to you.
00:30:43.496 --> 00:30:49.546
And if you are just teaching the content, this is how you do this technique, and you don't know where that technique goes next.
00:30:49.665 --> 00:31:08.871
Let's say you're teaching GCSE maths, if you've never taught A level, let alone beyond, those questions will not arise, the applications of the things you're teaching will not be obvious, and although I think you can functionally get through the content well, I think you are a less able teacher to demonstrate the why, which is kind of the point of this.
00:31:08.911 --> 00:31:15.171
And it's a, it's a difficult thing to solve because we are lacking in mathematics specialists in, in education in this country.
00:31:15.171 --> 00:31:21.671
And it's the thing maybe I fall back to when we will question our jobs sometimes, like, why am I doing what I'm doing?
00:31:21.971 --> 00:31:26.000
And as a math teacher, like the answer was not because more people are now numerate.
00:31:26.601 --> 00:31:37.280
Actually for me, it was because, you know, I get to teach people how to think that felt a bit better, but now I feel like that's still true, but I'm raising the possibility actually.
00:31:37.705 --> 00:31:40.746
of a generation of more people less turned off by mathematics.
00:31:40.766 --> 00:31:43.915
It's necessary to show them these bigger pictures and the digging for the why.
00:31:44.425 --> 00:31:46.445
And we don't have enough specialists in schools to do that.
00:31:46.476 --> 00:31:50.645
So someone has to make sure that that gap is still visible.
00:31:50.846 --> 00:31:52.496
Like here's, here's some of the why's.
00:31:53.695 --> 00:31:54.945
Justifying my existence again here.
00:31:55.746 --> 00:31:57.306
I think I agree with you on that, that's what I was saying.
00:31:57.736 --> 00:31:59.586
Some of the, some of the work that I'm involved in.
00:31:59.651 --> 00:32:11.161
at MEI that we're looking at projects to get involved in and it's and it's about like you said then it's raising It's not just you know, we've allison and I discussed in the first season what happens to students?
00:32:11.161 --> 00:32:15.080
Where do they lose and why do they lose that curiosity around maths and what happens?
00:32:15.080 --> 00:32:18.441
You know my three year old and my six year old never stop asking why?
00:32:19.151 --> 00:32:24.040
Literally never stop asking why all night long, blah, blah, everything.
00:32:24.040 --> 00:32:26.560
You know, I've moaned about my children before I do love them.
00:32:26.560 --> 00:32:26.780
Don't worry.
00:32:27.131 --> 00:32:33.941
But it's, it, what, something happens and what we've kind of come to think about, and Alison and I have discussed this, not on the podcast really, but is.
00:32:34.330 --> 00:32:44.820
It's parents, you know, we, we, we've talked recently about when the government talked about math to 18 and you get famous people coming out and saying, Oh, I hate math, blah, blah, blah.
00:32:45.550 --> 00:32:46.951
It's not, it's not the famous people.
00:32:46.951 --> 00:32:47.510
It's adults.
00:32:47.530 --> 00:32:52.270
It's parents that we need to get them more comfortable talking about maths.
00:32:52.895 --> 00:32:59.486
Yeah, we need to get the conversations about maths more common, you know You'll be doing this now then with your kid.
00:32:59.486 --> 00:33:00.355
You'll be reading to them.
00:33:00.425 --> 00:33:08.685
You'll be reading books to them, you know, and you Inherently will start talking about maths With your kid and that just will happen.
00:33:08.746 --> 00:33:22.865
Allison's done it with her teenager I do it every day with my kids, you know my wife shouts at me and Stuff when I'd make her explain fractions to me and and things and get her to encourage her to do their work herself but it's yeah.
00:33:23.276 --> 00:33:24.945
Yeah, I am still that person.
00:33:25.316 --> 00:33:26.885
But it's it's how do we get that?
00:33:26.885 --> 00:33:28.326
You know, how can we?
00:33:29.296 --> 00:33:45.171
Encourage the nation to talk about maths to like maths more to not be scared of it to to have this kind of You know this conference that you went to you mentioned at the start is about this public perception of mass just about you know And how do we raise that?
00:33:45.171 --> 00:33:45.980
You know, what can we do?
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:47.111
How can we improve?
00:33:47.891 --> 00:33:48.510
What's at the
00:33:48.510 --> 00:33:50.260
risk of going on a rant about it?
00:33:51.230 --> 00:34:18.650
Because clearly that's what i'm here for to go on a rant on the record But the digging for the why question which is you are obviously aware of for reasons in the title is desperately important and if you tell people about maths i think they turn off a bit that's the stereotypical reaction but actually if you just tell people something interesting or listen to their questions which i think is maths by another name is rational thought and questioning and not taking someone else's word for it That feels to me like what maths is about, then we can redeem it slightly.
00:34:18.760 --> 00:34:21.481
It turns out that numbers are the way we answer a lot of those questions.
00:34:21.501 --> 00:34:22.650
And that's why the maths comes in.
00:34:22.710 --> 00:34:27.451
However, the, the curiosity, like you say, is, is the thing to harness.
00:34:27.510 --> 00:34:36.931
And I think that's a pedagogical thing that I've enjoyed having time to play with, like, sort of providing a hook for curiosity, helps people ask questions.
00:34:36.951 --> 00:34:37.240
Why?
00:34:37.260 --> 00:34:41.990
And then the motivation is there to do what happens to be maths to answer the questions.
00:34:42.751 --> 00:34:50.050
But then your job as a teacher or presenter or performer is to provide the mathematical moment of curiosity or surprise.
00:34:50.391 --> 00:34:56.021
And so this is an emotional thing, this is not a content thing like, I need to teach you fractions.
00:34:56.170 --> 00:34:57.400
Actually, maybe you do.
00:34:57.940 --> 00:35:04.311
But if you show them something desperately surprising, and suddenly they ask you about fractions, The same outcome might be easier to achieve.
00:35:05.161 --> 00:35:16.141
Now, I'm not saying this is easy, but if you keep your eye open for things which do provoke the questions that lead you into the right direction, you want to talk about, that's a good way of being sort of planning some pedagogy, but you just got to look out for those things.
00:35:16.300 --> 00:35:25.231
And the reason I'm getting to here is that I've often reflected and talked about and tried using magic tricks for this purpose, there are, you know, magic is a.
00:35:25.690 --> 00:35:32.061
I'm not talking about Harry Potter level stuff because I can't do that, but hey magic tricks are sort of self aware that they are tricks.
00:35:32.061 --> 00:35:32.880
There's a clue in the name.
00:35:32.891 --> 00:35:33.771
These are deceptions.
00:35:33.771 --> 00:35:34.670
This is misdirection.
00:35:34.681 --> 00:35:36.530
This is a, but there's a piece of entertainment.
00:35:36.550 --> 00:35:38.911
It's a bit of performance done for fun.
00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:44.280
That is its only purpose, but they are fun because they spike your curiosity.
00:35:44.940 --> 00:35:47.621
They, they sort of poke you like that's not possible.
00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:50.121
And suddenly your brain's like, but so what did happen?
00:35:50.431 --> 00:35:58.831
And I think it's a really neat example of getting people to ask the questions that you maybe as a teacher, you want them to ask so that you can explain how things go.
00:35:59.351 --> 00:36:05.851
And I'm a massive fan of using silly magic tricks or mathematical magic tricks to provoke some curiosity.
00:36:06.456 --> 00:36:10.536
And then trying to harness it now that is possible in a classroom.
00:36:10.815 --> 00:36:15.056
It does take, I think some of the specialist awareness, like you need to have the confidence to do that sort of thing.
00:36:15.155 --> 00:36:24.835
And maybe there's a personality thing like doing cheap magic tricks in a shameless way is not everyone's personality, but it is a really nice thing.
00:36:24.835 --> 00:36:27.896
And I've definitely used that in mass inspiration to do a stage magic trick.
00:36:28.601 --> 00:36:35.150
that then provides some motivation to talk about what's going on, but it works just as well on a one to one basis or in a classroom, I think.
00:36:35.690 --> 00:36:39.231
Happy to talk more about that, but I realize I've just splurged a bit about magic.
00:36:40.221 --> 00:36:42.451
It's got that digging for the Y flavor behind it, I think.
00:36:42.501 --> 00:36:43.130
Yeah, and I
00:36:43.181 --> 00:36:48.221
think what you said there was getting it in the moment and then harnessing it.
00:36:48.590 --> 00:37:10.960
And I think for, you know, for me, I'm, I'm, I don't have, Well, the odd, you know, thing that you do where you all, you know, you end up with, it's always a multiple of nine and so therefore you get a nine at the end of it and all those sorts of things, but those ones, but but I think it's, for me, it was trying to get the, the, it's trying for the, for the children to realize that, you know, in, in primary school long multiplication isn't a magic trick.
00:37:11.570 --> 00:37:20.260
And, and actually if we think it is a sort of form of magic that we do all these things, go through these steps and out pops an answer, it's, it's the questioning of why around that.
00:37:20.260 --> 00:37:30.650
I mean, my, my feeling is it should never get to that stage because it's representing what you've learned about in another, in another way or using other representations and means of recording.
00:37:31.351 --> 00:37:48.021
I think having, having sort of tried to live these sorts of maths lessons with children in primary schools, the comments that always surprised me were not necessarily from the children, but were from the other adults in the class, because I, I used to get given that group that weren't on track for SATs in year six,
00:37:48.431 --> 00:37:48.581
go
00:37:48.581 --> 00:37:49.780
and do something with them.
00:37:50.780 --> 00:38:01.275
And the other adults who were there in droves because of the different needs within the groups would sort of come to me at the end of the first half term and say, I've never thought about maths like this before.
00:38:01.326 --> 00:38:15.775
I've, I've, I've learnt so much and it, and it's, and it, this was, it's not me blowing my trumpet, it was me feeling sort of saddened that you started to see the depth of the, the, the depth of the, of the problem around the attitude towards maths.
00:38:16.271 --> 00:38:23.340
And and, and sort of, yeah, I said to, I said, I said to somebody the other day, I said, I knew I was making progress with this class when I got them to cry.
00:38:23.641 --> 00:38:30.670
And this was not a really negative thing, but we realized they were crying because they actually cared about what was happening at that point.
00:38:30.851 --> 00:38:34.190
And some of them were happy tears because they've done well and some of them were frustration.
00:38:34.420 --> 00:38:36.400
But, you know, I said, shouldn't really be.
00:38:36.846 --> 00:38:38.766
shouting loudly about getting children to cry, but,
00:38:38.766 --> 00:38:39.346
but
00:38:39.346 --> 00:38:39.856
there was a sense of
00:38:40.306 --> 00:38:41.045
care is good,
00:38:41.275 --> 00:38:42.045
getting them to care.
00:38:42.065 --> 00:38:43.085
That was the key thing.
00:38:43.096 --> 00:38:49.666
They had a, and they had engaged with this thing called maths and they had a sense that they wanted to make progress with it.
00:38:50.036 --> 00:38:56.126
But, but yeah, that asking that, that asking why, and that wonder about how did you manage that?
00:38:56.126 --> 00:39:01.775
I think there's the, there's the big moment magic trick on our trip out school and the lights and the music.
00:39:01.815 --> 00:39:03.065
She's absolutely fantastic.
00:39:03.501 --> 00:39:05.590
But it's then almost then they're like, come on, right.
00:39:05.601 --> 00:39:06.820
You're the teachers of these kids.
00:39:06.851 --> 00:39:13.771
How are you going to recreate this in, in, in a, in a day to day way and harness that thinking is
00:39:13.820 --> 00:39:18.880
There is a clarification that you've picked up on really rightly as well, that I want to sort of make sure is heard, which is.
00:39:19.621 --> 00:39:26.581
Like you said, a lot of people who don't fully feel comfortable with mathematics or just learn an algorithm to do something, it does look like a magic trick.
00:39:26.630 --> 00:39:30.670
And that's the same content in a really negative connotation here.
00:39:30.701 --> 00:39:31.860
It's like, how do you do that?
00:39:31.871 --> 00:39:32.090
Don't know.
00:39:32.090 --> 00:39:32.811
It just works.
00:39:33.050 --> 00:39:41.400
And I think if you want to get pedagogical on it, the instrumental versus relational understanding made very famous by skimp and should be thought about by all teachers at all times.
00:39:41.940 --> 00:39:44.106
I'm not saying, One's better than the other.
00:39:44.286 --> 00:39:47.056
Both have like, you can learn an algorithm and turns out it works.
00:39:47.246 --> 00:39:48.106
That's a good thing.
00:39:48.445 --> 00:39:54.215
You can also understand why it works and having both is better than just one, I think, but I want to emphasize that.
00:39:54.916 --> 00:40:02.036
It can be a bad idea to use magic tricks because you can reinforce the idea that math is a set of algorithms that just work with no apparent reason.
00:40:02.076 --> 00:40:04.266
And that is emphatically not what I'm trying to do.
00:40:04.806 --> 00:40:19.315
So it's really important that you do what you mentioned, Alison, and make sure you do harness the curiosity that comes from seeing something which surprises you and you don't understand and turn it into a desire for understanding, which then may take some unpacking and some work, but without it.
00:40:19.686 --> 00:40:22.436
We're doing a disservice and that's, that's important.
00:40:22.436 --> 00:40:25.925
Cautionary note, the both, both bits need to be there.
00:40:26.106 --> 00:40:27.766
It's I'm not, yeah.
00:40:27.985 --> 00:40:31.925
Doing a cheap magic trick and then laughing in their face when they go understand it is not what I'm going for here.
00:40:32.766 --> 00:40:38.326
It's making me remember in a level maths in integration, you've got integration by inspection.
00:40:38.771 --> 00:41:08.945
Yeah and my friend Joe and I used to share a class at one of my old schools and you know, We'd buy my Twitter handle is desire to understand like I've always had things about problem solving in math This is the point of math is problem solving, you know, this is what you're learning it for you want to understand ask questions You know all that kind of stuff and I'd bang on about that with my a level class and then you'd get to this point You know around February, March time in year 13, and you get into kind of integration by inspection and they've learned some rules and they've done a bit of chain rule and all this kind of stuff.
00:41:09.206 --> 00:41:11.856
And then I'd write on the board integration by magic.
00:41:12.266 --> 00:41:15.905
And they'd be like, this just works by magic.
00:41:16.356 --> 00:41:17.326
And they'd be like, what do you mean?
00:41:17.326 --> 00:41:20.126
So you'd write it on the board and you'd go, Oh, here's the answer.
00:41:20.496 --> 00:41:23.351
And they'd be like, Oh, it's just magic.
00:41:23.911 --> 00:41:24.990
It's like, well, where's the working out?
00:41:25.001 --> 00:41:25.670
It's just magic.
00:41:26.271 --> 00:41:32.440
And then get so confused because, you know, we, we were trying to teach them in the right way and encourage questioning and all that kind of stuff.
00:41:32.811 --> 00:41:36.900
And then we'd literally then fellow teacher who shared the class, she'd walk in and go.
00:41:37.266 --> 00:41:39.456
Oh, are you doing, are you doing integration by magic today, Miss Lumley?
00:41:39.615 --> 00:41:41.056
I'll be like, yeah, we're doing it by magic.
00:41:41.215 --> 00:41:42.545
And they go, how does it work?
00:41:42.545 --> 00:41:43.786
And she'd go, it's just magic.
00:41:44.596 --> 00:41:50.076
And then obviously we would unpick it and the kids would look into it and try and figure out, well, hang on, it can't be magic.
00:41:50.286 --> 00:41:51.076
Why does it work?
00:41:51.106 --> 00:41:52.025
How is it working?
00:41:52.365 --> 00:41:52.746
And there's a really
00:41:52.746 --> 00:41:53.326
lovely moment.
00:41:53.326 --> 00:41:55.815
If you've got a student going, but how does it work?
00:41:56.005 --> 00:41:59.996
In your classroom, you know, yeah, progress is available, right?
00:41:59.996 --> 00:42:02.635
Yes, that's a really good moment.
00:42:02.655 --> 00:42:06.076
But I really think this is this is nice examples of pedagogy.
00:42:06.076 --> 00:42:08.005
It's not which order do you teach stuff?
00:42:08.045 --> 00:42:09.425
And what's your classroom questioning?
00:42:09.465 --> 00:42:11.695
Those things are important and desperately important.
00:42:11.715 --> 00:42:16.666
But also it's the, how do you harness the motivational effects that we all have as human beings?
00:42:16.695 --> 00:42:18.985
Like what emotions can you provoke in order to use them?
00:42:19.346 --> 00:42:20.085
You've got to use them.
00:42:20.376 --> 00:42:21.476
But you've also got to provoke them.
00:42:21.876 --> 00:42:23.766
So I really liked your example.
00:42:23.815 --> 00:42:29.085
I think I, when I teach integrating factors, which is further down the line, I call it a magic multiply.
00:42:29.106 --> 00:42:30.346
Like here's an equation, can't solve it.
00:42:30.831 --> 00:42:32.300
I'm just going to multiply by this magic item.
00:42:32.300 --> 00:42:32.601
Boom.
00:42:32.601 --> 00:42:33.731
Now it's really easy to solve.
00:42:33.731 --> 00:42:44.021
And again, it feels like magic, but as long as you're presenting that as like, this is so good that we're going to use it, but you should be asking, well, why on earth does that work?
00:42:44.271 --> 00:42:51.380
And I think this is a pedagogical thing that all teachers are aware of, but it actually gives you permission to, to have a bit of fun, like if you can.
00:42:51.596 --> 00:42:55.615
provoke that question, it's easier to provide the time afterwards.
00:42:55.615 --> 00:42:59.476
You've sort of bought the fuel to motivate the exploration.
00:42:59.945 --> 00:43:23.451
And maybe to finish the magic metaphor, I find it fascinating that magic tricks as a magician and teaching as a maths teacher, they feel like polar opposites magic is about misdirection, mystery, obfuscation, making something appear unreasonable, and teaching is about clarity, clear explanation, removing the mystery, lifting the fog.
00:43:23.681 --> 00:43:30.215
They are literally opposites, and yet, Because they're so opposite, you can use one to provoke the other and vice versa.
00:43:30.275 --> 00:43:32.465
And that for me, I get really excited.
00:43:32.476 --> 00:43:46.755
You can hear, I'm getting excited about it, but it satisfies the performer teacher in me, because you get to create a bit of spectacle, even on a really small scale, provoke the human emotions that we all have, and that in the end are the reason why any human ever studied maths in the first place.
00:43:47.476 --> 00:43:51.795
And then you sort of have the fuel to go off on the well worn path of explaining what's going on.
00:43:52.315 --> 00:43:53.365
But nobody does anything.
00:43:53.416 --> 00:43:55.346
Without motivation, as we've already discussed.
00:43:55.346 --> 00:43:59.226
And so you're, you're just paying attention to that first bit of providing some motivation.
00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:01.710
I love the opposites that magic versus teaching.
00:44:01.811 --> 00:44:02.451
They're literally opposites.
00:44:02.451 --> 00:44:03.820
And yet they work together.
00:44:04.141 --> 00:44:07.570
Is, you know, recognize we're getting towards the end of our time here.
00:44:07.621 --> 00:44:11.971
And I always start to think at this point, you know, what, what's the takeaway for the person listening?
00:44:12.550 --> 00:44:27.490
If, if they're a teacher, if they're a lecturer, if they're just here because they know who Ben is, you know, if they're listening to this, what's their takeaway I think for me, if I'm thinking of my teaching head on, it's that whole idea of, there are so many ways to teach.
00:44:28.440 --> 00:44:28.601
Maths.
00:44:28.630 --> 00:44:30.760
There are so many ways to do a lesson.
00:44:31.181 --> 00:44:33.951
Some of, sometimes I used to say to the kids, you know, Guys, I'm really sorry.
00:44:33.951 --> 00:44:35.300
Today's a pretty boring lesson.
00:44:35.911 --> 00:44:37.161
We've just got to do some practice.
00:44:37.251 --> 00:44:39.181
Like we've just got to do some practice.
00:44:39.181 --> 00:44:40.170
We've, we've played around.
00:44:40.170 --> 00:44:41.541
We've talked, we've looked at these things.
00:44:41.971 --> 00:44:48.530
We just need to make sure we've got these skills down and they'd be like, okay, that's fine because they know something else different might be coming.
00:44:48.811 --> 00:44:58.440
But then you've got lessons like where you do a magic trick, or you've got lessons where you might show a video to get people talking, or you've got lessons where I used to love getting kids stuck.
00:44:58.440 --> 00:45:00.940
I'd put a problem on the board that I knew they couldn't answer.
00:45:01.606 --> 00:45:04.606
But I also know in a couple of lessons time, you will be able to answer.
00:45:04.606 --> 00:45:12.436
But if, if I've led them to the point in the right way, they're going to ask the questions that are going to take us through the next two lessons as if they've done it.
00:45:13.106 --> 00:45:14.166
Whereas I've planned it.
00:45:14.346 --> 00:45:18.445
I know exactly what we're trying to do, but I'm going to let them lead me through this.
00:45:18.456 --> 00:45:22.206
And then they're feeling this power of, you know, Oh, but Mr.
00:45:22.206 --> 00:45:23.416
Lumley, how do I do that?
00:45:23.876 --> 00:45:25.356
Oh, well, I can show you how we could do that.
00:45:25.365 --> 00:45:26.235
Like, let's talk about that.
00:45:26.235 --> 00:45:27.266
What, what could that look like?
00:45:27.266 --> 00:45:28.226
What have we done before?
00:45:28.521 --> 00:45:30.311
And all of a sudden they're asking the questions.
00:45:30.840 --> 00:45:33.240
And then you've got your traditional three, four part lesson.
00:45:33.240 --> 00:45:36.291
You know, there's so many different ways to teach math lessons.
00:45:36.356 --> 00:45:40.646
It shouldn't always just be one way fits all.
00:45:40.976 --> 00:45:44.295
And you can't always do it by getting them stuck every lesson.
00:45:44.306 --> 00:45:48.416
You can't always do it by here's, here's a load of practice that we need to do today.
00:45:48.425 --> 00:45:52.215
You can't always do it by bringing guitar in or doing a magic trick.
00:45:52.505 --> 00:45:53.545
That can't happen.
00:45:54.016 --> 00:45:58.275
But teachers have got to have that arsenal or that, that willingness in their head.
00:45:58.275 --> 00:46:00.985
And they're thinking to go, right, what might work here?
00:46:01.476 --> 00:46:03.996
What could just, you know, grab them again.
00:46:04.715 --> 00:46:04.775
I don't know.
00:46:04.775 --> 00:46:06.175
Alison, you're nodding along with me
00:46:06.175 --> 00:46:06.826
here.
00:46:06.826 --> 00:46:08.436
It was that final question you asked.
00:46:08.436 --> 00:46:17.806
Is teachers actually, you know, having the license, I suppose, to look at the content of what's coming up and going, what's going to work best for this content for my kids?
00:46:18.335 --> 00:46:36.266
And that, I think, is the bit that You know, I can't conjure up extra hours in the day, but if you've got your very prescribed set of planning there, and some of the, the, the heart, the board has been taken away from you, but looking at how you're going to present that to the children, what's the best way to, to put this over.
00:46:36.266 --> 00:46:38.596
And I'm, I'm, I want to challenge you on your skills.
00:46:38.596 --> 00:46:50.396
We've just got to practice these skills because I think those can be some of the most interesting lessons, because if you present the skill in different ways, we've got, okay, we've got a strategy to go through here, but I'm only going to give you some, I'm going to give you some bits, but not others.
00:46:50.706 --> 00:46:53.576
Have you got enough information to do what we've been working on?
00:46:53.795 --> 00:47:03.626
And can they, and it's all, I mean, in teaching for mastery, we talk about revealing the structure of the mathematics, and that the structure of what's going on underneath it, how does that number relate to that number in this problem?
00:47:03.626 --> 00:47:11.731
And I always go back to my little lad in my last ever class, who always, whenever there was a word problem, would look at me and say, is it add or times Mrs.
00:47:11.740 --> 00:47:11.851
Hopper?
00:47:12.481 --> 00:47:14.610
Because he could do adding and he could do timesing.
00:47:14.610 --> 00:47:18.871
He never asked if it was subtractional division because he was a bit didn't, wasn't so good at those.
00:47:19.141 --> 00:47:28.411
And I always go back and think, what should have happened for him in the six years we had him in that school that he didn't need to ask, is it add or times Mrs.
00:47:28.411 --> 00:47:28.760
Hopper?
00:47:28.990 --> 00:47:31.900
That he knew how those numbers related to each other, that structure.
00:47:32.070 --> 00:47:37.621
And if we'd spent more time thinking about how We taught and why we were teaching it in that way.
00:47:37.661 --> 00:47:39.391
I think he'd have asked different questions.
00:47:41.170 --> 00:47:42.931
Yeah, that's, that's really nice.
00:47:43.351 --> 00:47:43.800
Okay.
00:47:44.081 --> 00:47:45.820
It feels like a, it feels like a time.
00:47:46.070 --> 00:47:50.041
It feels like we've had a great conversation journey there as usual.
00:47:50.041 --> 00:47:56.851
We've, we've asked one or two of our questions, but we've been able to just kind of talk about maths and, and education and teaching is great.
00:47:57.240 --> 00:48:02.661
There's a brilliant magic trick in a Derren Brown book where he explains how it works and everything, and you can learn it.
00:48:03.021 --> 00:48:07.081
And I've done that in class many times and it only works because of probability.
00:48:07.721 --> 00:48:08.481
Is it the N
00:48:08.481 --> 00:48:08.971
E M T one?
00:48:10.041 --> 00:48:12.440
I can't remember is basically two cards.
00:48:12.460 --> 00:48:20.190
If you shuffle the over shuffle type thing, the chances of splitting these two cards up is so remote that the trick is going to work.
00:48:20.710 --> 00:48:21.811
And sometimes it doesn't work.
00:48:21.831 --> 00:48:28.300
And that's quite nice actually, because you give it to a kid and they'll do the, you know, split deal and they'll, and you go, Oh no.
00:48:28.641 --> 00:48:33.391
But generally, you know, the majority of people shuffle poorly, if you like.
00:48:33.710 --> 00:48:37.780
And therefore the chance of splitting these cards up is so small that actually the risk of repeating ourselves.
00:48:38.715 --> 00:48:45.556
That's a nice example, just to go back, of like, right, probability says such and such, blah blah blah, and then, then it is in your mind, you're like.
00:48:45.985 --> 00:48:50.126
But does this work and doing it as a trick is a way of, can we actually do this?
00:48:50.166 --> 00:48:51.735
And then sort of backing yourself on it.
00:48:51.746 --> 00:48:56.226
So it's a nice example of like, ah, and then you turn it into a tiny spectacle to pursue some probability chat.
00:48:56.786 --> 00:48:57.275
Exactly.
00:48:57.306 --> 00:49:01.945
And it, it's opening those, it's having those opportunities to open those conversations, which is, you know,
00:49:02.585 --> 00:49:17.505
Can I finish with I'll quote because I found it and it just speaks exactly I think to what you were saying and it was in a, I think it was the last ever edition of MEI's M4 magazine a few years ago and he said, if you're studying French then you start with Ouelles le Char and hopefully by A level you're reading Proust.
00:49:17.896 --> 00:49:22.231
What worries me with math is that the progression is rather like walking around the bottom of a mountain.
00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:25.481
You cover the same ground again and again, but you never get any good views.
00:49:26.260 --> 00:49:27.021
Where's that quote from?
00:49:27.260 --> 00:49:35.072
It was Hugh Hunt in MEI's M4 magazine a few years ago, and I've used it an awful lot when talking about, yeah, fantastic.
00:49:35.072 --> 00:49:36.336
It's very true.
00:49:36.336 --> 00:49:41.940
I just thought that really linked to, yeah, to what, what you've what we've been talking about anyway.
00:49:42.931 --> 00:49:43.530
Fantastic.
00:49:43.896 --> 00:49:45.346
Okay, Ben, thank you so much.
00:49:45.346 --> 00:49:53.626
I know we've gone a little bit over our time that we said, but thank you so much for coming on and, and allowing us to have our little gremlins that keep appearing on our podcast recently.
00:49:53.945 --> 00:49:58.525
Hopefully when you're listening to this at home, you'll be like, what gremlins, I didn't notice anything different.
00:49:58.905 --> 00:50:00.206
And then the editing has worked.
00:50:00.505 --> 00:50:01.315
But believe me.
00:50:01.471 --> 00:50:04.090
Things keep trying to get in our way, which is annoying.
00:50:04.380 --> 00:50:05.110
So thank you, Ben.
00:50:05.110 --> 00:50:06.610
Thank you, Alison, as usual.
00:50:06.670 --> 00:50:07.561
Thank you for listening.
00:50:07.731 --> 00:50:09.791
Hopefully you can take something away from this.
00:50:09.860 --> 00:50:16.240
If you want to get in touch with us find everything, all the links to everything that's been mentioned will be in the notes and our Twitter handles, et cetera.
00:50:16.490 --> 00:50:20.931
If you have any questions for Ben, I'm sure he won't mind you getting in touch with him on Twitter and saying hello.
00:50:21.081 --> 00:50:22.911
And hopefully we'll talk to you again soon.
00:50:22.990 --> 00:50:24.501
Thank you so much for listening.
00:50:24.630 --> 00:50:25.670
Catch you next time.
00:50:25.971 --> 00:50:26.300
Bye bye.