• Question: When and how did you develop your love for maths?

    Asked by Abya on 7 Jan 2020. This question was also asked by secretsaudience15, bag9, jjr17, maddywhitlam, brendan.poole, ashleigh, soph17, jcoleall18, ddryd, lewisbircham19607, 19hholmandavis.
    • Photo: Sophie Carr

      Sophie Carr answered on 7 Jan 2020:

      My love of maths developed over a long time and it started with a fascination for aeroplanes and flying in general. I quickly realised on my degree that it was my ability in maths (and not my ability to build something) that would help me in engineering. Once I started work as an aeronautical engineer I became interested in why people stop being able to see all the information available and that’s when I found out about Bayes Theorem. I studied part time for a PhD and moved from engineering into mainly maths. I still absolutely love aeroplanes and flying – I just now work more in maths.

    • Photo: Maja Popovic

      Maja Popovic answered on 7 Jan 2020:

      First thing I recall is playing with my Grandpa’s calculator when I was 6.
      I was very happy and proud when I realised what the strange square root symbol is.
      It was something like:
      When I tip this weird thing after a number, I get very strange numbers.
      But, sometimes the numbers are normal: 4 becomes 2, 9 becomes 3, 16 becomes 4, so, what is the connection? Aha, 3*3=9, 4*4=16, so now I’ll try with 25… *suspension*… yes, 5!!!”.

    • Photo: Sreejita Ghosh

      Sreejita Ghosh answered on 7 Jan 2020:

      Till GCSE it used to be just one of those subjects it was easy to get good grades in even by studying less. During high school it seemed tougher at times. Then during my Bachelors in Engineering I was beginning to see the real applications of Calculus, Trigonometry, Geometry, Probability, and Linear Algebra. Then Maths become a nice tool for me, to help understand some other topics, such as Pattern recognition, electrical circuits, and instrumentation. During my PhD my appreciation of Maths became pronounced as I started using Maths for designing new algorithms to find solutions to some of the medical problems, and that of sustainable (energy efficient) buildings.
      I realized that in high school my interest in Maths had dropped because I did not know why exactly I was being made to solve those “awful equations”, for what purpose. Now that I know why and how Maths is needed I feel motivated towards Maths.

    • Photo: Fiona Macfarlane

      Fiona Macfarlane answered on 7 Jan 2020:

      I didn’t really like Maths until my 6th/final year at school, when it was one of the only subjects I could take. I am really glad I had to take it though as I started to actually enjoy maths and started to see that it is useful for many things. Unfortunately by that point I had already applied for university to do Biochemistry. But the university I started out at had a degree in Math Biology that I had never heard of before, and it was possible for me to switch to something that I still love doing today!

    • Photo: Diana Kornbrot

      Diana Kornbrot answered on 8 Jan 2020:

      About 6 yrs old. doing calylations of cost of 3 buns and working out merchnt was wrong because his price was not divisble by 3. It was certainty of theorems that fascinated me and still does.
      BUT have many friends and students who developed interest MUCH older – as students 18yrs or even 25 years. Can grab one any time

    • Photo: Katie Atkinson

      Katie Atkinson answered on 8 Jan 2020:

      I enjoyed maths at primary school but it wasn’t until I was at university that I developed a real love of maths. In the later years of high school I didn’t enjoy maths as I couldn’t see how all the theory related to a broad range of real world problems. When I started studying computing at university I took a first year module on maths for computing and had a really excellent teacher who helped me understand the theory and in the rest of my degree I could then understand the applications of maths in computing. To my surprise, my marks on the first year maths module were the highest I got out of the four exams I took. This game me confidence in my maths ability and I challenged myself to learn more and apply my learning, which ultimately led me into pursuing a PhD in AI.

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