Talking Maths in Public Podcast

Series 2, Episode 4 - Transcript

Katie Steckles: Welcome to the Talking Maths in Public Podcast, a community podcast for members of the Talking Maths in Public Network, which is a UK organisation bringing together maths communicators of all kinds. My name's Katie Steckles, and I'm a maths communicator and member of the Talking Maths in Public team.

In this podcast, we'll be hearing from various members of the community sharing their maths communication projects, recommending their favourite bits of maths comm, and discussing how we can communicate maths engagingly and effectively. In this episode, we'll be hearing from Ella Wild, the project manager of the groundbreaking City of Maths project taking place in Leeds in 2026 and '7.

We'll also hear Tom Briggs and Peter Rowlett's thoughts on how maths history is part of culture, and we'll hear Sam Hartburn and Daniele Aurelio, who both run monthly Maths Jam evenings, talking to Sam Holloway. To see links to the things discussed in this episode and find more episodes, you can visit talkingmathsinpublic.uk/podcast.

You might have heard of a city of culture, but what about a city of maths? For this year and next year, Leeds is officially the UK's first city of maths, and Ella Wild has been brought in to make it all happen. Here's her thoughts on the project, how it's going so far, and the challenges she's faced.

Ella Wild: Hi, everyone. My name is Ella Wild. I'm the project manager for the City of Maths. My background is mainly in the cultural sector, and then most recently in the STEM sector as well, so hopefully a good interesting mix to bring to this role. So for many years, I was freelance working for companies like Manchester International Festival, different councils, Blackpool Council being one of them, which was one of my favourite places on earth, which I absolutely loved.So doing Blackpool Illuminations switch on, the Blackpool FC Homecoming Parade back in the day when they were up in the Premier League, at various different, like, theater, cultural events and festivals throughout the northwest. And then most recently, I was head of festivals and events for the Science Museum Group, which is where I then got into the brilliant, wonderful world of STEM engagement.

Had a great time based over at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, delivering the Manchester Science Festival and involved with the Bradford Science Festival and the events programs at the museum as well. 

So hopefully able to bring a bit of that to this role. And I think my experience in STEM and with cultural festivals and events was something that attracted me to this role with the City of Maths. We're really trying to use public programs, existing events, festivals, areas of interest that people already have and are engaged with, and to bring some maths to that. So whether that is Light Night that we're a part of in October, or whether it's Breeze in the Park events that we've recently done this summer across various different parks in Leeds, where they're already engaging with people, putting on a brilliant public program, how can we bring some really fun and interesting maths activities to those events and inject a bit of the, the magic of maths for people to experience.

So City of Maths is a very unique project. It's taking place specifically across Leeds for the next two years, so this year, 2026, through to December 2027. And the main aim, if you had to boil it down, is really to change perceptions in maths, where we need to. So obviously a lot of people already absolutely love maths, but there are a lot of people who maybe didn't enjoy doing maths at school, feel a bit afraid of it, a bit nervous when people start talking about maths to them, or you start thinking about change, or you're put on the spot with times tables. It's all those kind of things that I think sometimes revert back to school days for people, or whatever experience they've had with maths. And it's to try and show people that, (a) they don't need to have that fear: everyone is and can be good at maths. And,(b) linking in with point (a), is that it's already a part of our everyday lives.

It's already a part of what we're doing, whether we're going to do our weekly shop, or we're working out the football league table and the scores, Strictly Come Dancing results. It sounds basic stuff, but it's all maths, and we're using it as part of every day. And I think the more that we can show that to people and give people the confidence, and also show people where maths is, where they wouldn't necessarily expect it, especially also in careers as well for people looking to see what they want to do next.

Whether it's young people who are at school or adults as well, maybe a bit of a career change, just seeing that actually maths is part of a whole wide range of jobs and career choices, and that it's not all about being a doctor or a scientist in a lab. It's also used in game designs, and the designer that we're working with, the artist for the Light Night piece, was saying just the other day how much she uses maths as part of her work, which she hadn't necessarily realized before.

I think it's just revealing the magic of maths as a subject for people and showing them that it is something that is so brilliant and so varied and wide and really opening that world up to people. 

The audience for City of Maths is very varied. Our core audience is high end of primary school and lower end of secondary school, because we know from data that this can be the time where a lot of young people maybe feel like maths isn't for them. They can't see it as a pathway. They don't really want to study it. They fall out of love with it in a way. 

So we're really trying to show young people, especially in that age bracket, that maths absolutely is for them. And they can see it through things, such as we're working with the brilliant team at Leeds Rhinos. So how is it part of rugby when they're going to a match on a Saturday? Again, looking at the league tables, the sports science behind how the players train, their health, their fitness, where they stand on the pitch to take a try, all these angles. Really trying to show children the behind the scenes, really of maths.

It's not all the textbooks and things that they may be learning, but how it's part of everything that they're already interested in. So we're doing some great work with Leeds Rhinos with that approach. We've got a great resource called Know the Score, which is on our website, and that's completely free. That's aimed at primary school teachers who maybe want to bring maths into a PE lesson. So there's some great lesson plans as part of that, which really bring maths through in a really fun and hopefully engaging way. 

Yeah, and in terms of the other audiences, so we've got young people, but also we really want to engage with as many people as possible. So adults, especially parents and carers and families of young children, so that people are really learning and engaging together because we know that when everyone as a group is focused on maths, and feels enjoyment with maths, then that brings everyone along together. So we're doing a lot of fun family events across the city.

We've just had a great run of 11 “Breeze in the Park” events that we were part of through the brilliant team at Leeds City Council, engaging with thousands of families over the summer With our free hands-on maths activities, a lot of maths busking. Maths busking is essentially magic tricks with maths.

Maths and magic to me go hand in hand. So the maths buskers, we've got a great team of City of Maths ambassadors, and they delivered that content to people across the summer, some really lovely one to two-minute quick activities, and it was just brilliant seeing the faces of families taking part in some of these activities and seeing the “wow” moments when they suddenly reveal the trick behind the maths that they're showing people. It was really lovely. 

So yeah we've got a really broad and range of audiences that we want to reach as part of the project. 

So I think the project's going really well so far. We're well into our first year. Ruth, who heads up the schools engagement side of things, is doing an amazing job reaching out to all of the primary and secondary schools across Leeds.

We've got so many brilliant resources working with partners such as Leeds Rhinos, Taskmaster, we're doing loads of stuff with Maths Week England, which we've got coming up in November. There's loads on our website in terms of all the free resources and a lot that we've shared with schools. We've done some brilliant workshops in schools as well, in partnership with the University of Cambridge.

There's a lot more information on our website, but we did a brilliant project with them all about the Venn bowling machine, which was- is John Venn of “Venn diagram” fame. And he created a bowling machine back in the day, which actually bowled out one of the Australian cricketers. It's an amazing contraption. Again, go on our website and have a look at the image. 

But the University of Cambridge rebuilt the cricket bowling machine to John Venn's specifications, and we actually brought that over to Leeds to display as part of a series of public events. And we created, or the University of Cambridge created, smaller Venn bowling machine models, which we took out to a load of primary schools across Leeds, and young children were able to build their own mini Venn bowling machines in a Lego-esque way. We delivered some great workshops with them all around angles and throw and distance, which was a great link into the work of John Venn. 

So my background isn't specifically maths communication. Obviously most recently working at the Science Museum Group with STEM engagement, that's when I really stepped into this wonderful world of science and maths and how we can really engage audiences in it, especially those people who feel it's not for them. That's where I feel like my passion really comes from and the reason why I do what I do. 

But I think my background in cultural events is also really useful for this role and how we can blend the two together, and STEM and the arts I think are just so intrinsically linked. It's all about trying to make sense of the world in some way. And I always think there's really brilliant outcomes when you blend the two together. I think hopefully with what we're doing with City of Maths and communicating maths in a bit of a different and maybe unique way, so we're working with artists as part of “Light Night” for a maths-themed projection piece, bringing maths engagement into existing events such as the “Breeze in the Park” events that we've done, we've done a lot of family fun days for Leeds City Museum, we've got some great events coming up at Leeds Library. And really thinking about ways that we can engage people with some brilliant hands-on activities that maybe aren't explicitly maths but people enjoy doing, and it's a great introduction and a great positive experience for people to then continue their maths journey.

We're working with a range of project partners who are all making City of Maths possible and enabling us to reach a wide range of people across Leeds some of them are Asda. So we have regular competitions in the Asda stores, Killingbeck, Middleton and Pudsey, where we set people challenges as part of their shop.

So we've currently got a display board on the toilet roll section of the Asda's. If you're in the Asda's in the coming weeks, please go and check it out when you're looking for your loo roll. But we've got a challenge there where you have to guesstimate the amount of loo roll that Asda sold in twenty twenty-five, and it's all about having a go, as it is with everything we do in City of Maths.

Just have a go at it, get involved. And we've also got a Halloween-themed board, which is coming up, which is gonna be aimed at families, where children have got to try and get as long a list as they can of Halloween items that you can buy for £5 and then submit that to us, and they'll win a Halloween, big Halloween party bundle.

So really great to be working with partners like Asda who absolutely get what we're trying to do with the City of Maths, get the message out that maths is fun, it's engaging, just have a go at it, and it's brilliant to be actually in stores and engaging with shoppers as part of their shop.

I've also mentioned the Leeds Rhinos Foundation, who are absolutely brilliant. We're doing loads of stuff with them, especially around engagement in schools, which they already do so well. We've got the resources in schools- the Know The Score, and we're also doing some unique stadium tours with the foundation, which are maths-themed.

So primary schools from across Leeds have been invited to go to the Leeds Rhinos stadium, take part in some fun maths activities, even try and solve a Rubik's Cube faster than one of their star players, Ryan Hall, who's also a big fan of maths himself. And then also inviting them to one of the rugby matches to celebrate their involvement in the project.

So again, just brilliant partners who absolutely get what we're trying to do with the City of Maths And I think, yeah, this year has just been a real highlight and a great start to the project. I feel like we're really getting the word out there across the city, thanks to the various partners that are involved, and especially the Breeze in the Parks that have just happened over the summer.

It was absolutely brilliant to see so many families enjoying the activities that we're putting on, whether it was boiling hot or pouring down with rain and the wind brushing everyone about across the field. Everyone was just so happy to get involved and give it a go. And just seeing so many positive experiences that people were having with maths, and hopefully we'll have many more of those over this year and next year, and heading into the future as well.

So a massive part of this project is the legacy of the City of Maths and how we can really embed what we're doing across the city, in schools, across community groups, and people that live and work in the city as well, to really make sure that sharing the magic of maths is embedded in the city as much as possible, and that we'll leave a really strong legacy moving forward.

Katie Steckles: Thanks to Ella for sharing her perspective. And to find out more about the project, check the links in the show notes. Up next on the Talking Maths in Public podcast, previous podcast star Tom Briggs talks to fellow TMiP member and maths history fan Peter Rowlett about the links between maths, local history, and culture, and how this feeds into maths engagement.

Peter Rowlett: So I'm Peter Rowlett. I teach maths at Sheffield Hallam University, and I do various sort of outreach in schools and things like that, and I'm here with Tom. Do you wanna introduce yourself, Tom?

Tom Briggs: Hi, I'm Tom Briggs. I'm a maths communicator and museum learning consultant, and also an author of The Mathematicians Library, and I've done a little bit of research into looking at what teachers or how teachers and museums might interact educationally.

Peter Rowlett: Yeah. So I'm interested in this 'cause I have a few things going on, but one of them is that the British Society for the History of Mathematics, which you're on the council of. Is that right? Yes. Cool.

Tom Briggs: Full disclosure.

Peter Rowlett: And yes, I am a schools lecturer for them. They have this history in mathematics education scheme.

And yeah I signed up for that, and I'm supposed to go out into schools and give talks that are to do with sort of history and mathematics and things like that. And my approach, the reason I was quite interested in doing this really, is because I'm quite keen to find somewhat tenuous links between the global history of mathematics and my own local history and pull on those as a way of kind of getting local interest into the history of mathematics.

So the big thing that we have in Nottingham is we have George Green of Green's Theorem and all that. He was born here and so on. There's a windmill you can go and visit that was built by his dad and stuff like this. And then we have- Ada Lovelace is buried here, although never lived here, but don't tell anyone that bit, right?

The Byron family from sort of North Nottinghamshire and so on. And the other one that I've got is there's a big house near me, near where I live, about 10 minutes' walk from where I'm sitting, where it's a big Elizabethan house and the, I don't know, the great-grandson of the guy who built it was a naturalist called Francis Willoughby, who also wrote this book about games.

And he was quite interested in maths and games and sort of mechanics of tennis balls and probability of card games and things like this. So I've been looking into this, thinking, "That'll do. That's enough of a thread. I can connect." And I've been going out to schools with this as an offer, and the take-up isn't huge, actually.

And I thought that schools will be interested in local culture and history and how to get at that through maths is quite a good thing. Anyway, I did my history and I did my maths and games session last week, and as I was preparing for that, I was thinking like, "Why aren't-- nobody's chosen Green this year."

I did a Green last year. And, why is that not an obvious sort of bite my hand off? And then I thought about you, 'cause you've done work in this area, and yeah, perhaps you could talk, 'cause you've been a maths teacher who brings history into the classroom.

Tom Briggs: Yeah. I started my career as a maths teacher; did my PGCE 2006, 2007, and I've s- taught since then on and off. Was a full-time teacher for a few years, then became Bletchley Park's learning manager for another few years. Then when I was made redundant in 2020, the whole COVID thing, I was part-time teaching, classroom teaching in Milton Keynes, and then part-time freelance maths in museum stuff.

So I've got a foot in each camp, which I think gives me an interesting perspective on these things. And I did my MA in 2022 - MA in education, and a lot of my assignments focused on the intersection or some intersection of maths teaching and museum education. My final thesis was on schools taking maths groups, secondary maths groups into museums for the purposes of doing some kind of maths activity, and talking to teachers about why they did that and what they thought the students got from it, talking to the museum educators about why they provided that sort of thing.

And then more recently, I've done a research project with a colleague, Jason Yip, about I guess it's like the flip side of that, which is bringing history themes into maths classrooms and one thing I found with talking-- obviously I've got a certain insight myself as a maths teacher as to why people might do or not do or not seek them out.

But also I've spoken to a number of maths teachers, and it's quite interesting. There's a bit of a split really. There's-- So with my MA thesis, I spoke to some maths teachers who I got in touch with them because they were already taking students out to museums to do maths trips. And for them it was for the want of a better phrase, a bit of a no-brainer.

It was like w- we want students to have a better relationship with maths. That's why we're doing this. And I think that's a key thing with the subset of maths teachers that do engage with history and other things like that, is they're looking not necessarily for curriculum teaching.

They're looking for a mathematical experience for their students where their students come away from it thinking, "Actually, maths isn't all that bad."

Peter Rowlett: Yeah. So this is the thing that- this is my feeling I think on the subject. And so even when I'm not doing something that's overtly historical, I'm doing a careers talk or something like that, I'm still talking about the history that maths has and its global culture connections with mathematics.

Because I want them to think of maths as a- as something that humans do and not as this kind of separate thing that you only do it in one class at school. But it's actually deeply connected to all sorts of other things in their lives. And so that, that approach makes total sense to me. But am I totally out there thinking that schools in ge-- individual teachers, but schools in general presumably want to be part of the place that they're in and connected to that?

Or is that not on their agenda?

Tom Briggs: Yeah I think there are nuances to this. I think it's probably more common in primary schools. Primary schools are- they have a more holistic approach in general to the curriculum, so they want ... they're deliberately looking for things to line up different bits of different subjects with each other and see the connections and the intersections.

And I remember at- when I was at Bletchley Park we had a bit of a slight worry at one point when World War II was moved from the primary curriculum into the secondary- ... curriculum and we thought a lot of our primary schools would end up not being able to justify a trip.

But actually, they ended up justifying it on the basis of l- a local history study- ... rather than the World War II side of things. So they did exactly the same thing- Yes ... but they found a way to link it with their local history because everybody's local history has a World War II link.

Peter Rowlett: Yes. And I'm remembering my son did a trip that was to some, activity center in a park run by the city or something like that, but it was Roman themed, and they built an aqueduct- out of drainpipes and did some catapult things and things like that. But it was Roman themed because Roman's on the curriculum for whichever year he was in, and so obviously the activity center had cottoned on to- Yeah ... we need to do a thing that connects to whatever it is that they're learning.

Tom Briggs: Yeah. A lo- lot of what I do with museums my entire sort of ethos of my pre-LARS work is that wherever I go, whatever museum, there's going to be a maths link. Partly that's because I generally feel that maths is so deeply embedded in human history that it- it's there somewhere. There's a little, there's a thread poking out somewhere where- where whichever part of history you're looking at, and everybody's local area has, has history.

Yeah. I think there's al- there's always a link to be made. And I think it's not just about museums obviously, 'cause we're talking about history in general, but I think museums are a good hook for a local history project- Yeah ... or ideas. And if those museums can dig around in the maths bit, you might be able to sell that to schools a bit better.

But I do think there's a bit of a split in schools and with teachers in general, and specifically thinking about maths teachers. I think you've got some maths teachers who are interested in history and have considered the role that mathematics has in history, and the role that history has in mathematics and things like that.

And then you've got other teachers who don't have that experience, and at the secondary level, everything is-- subjects are so tightly segregated. They are, they're in their own special silos. And you, y- you have a situation where y- you can have two teachers who are teaching essentially the same thing in two different subjects, and they never, ever find out about it.

One example from my own practice is when I was in my last teaching role, I had a year 13 retake group, which is group of GCSE students who have been retaking and retaking in the hope of Getting whatever grade that they need to get, which is, there's a political discussion to have there, but we- this is not the place for it.

But they were in this group and I used to encourage the students to bring along stuff that they wanted to work on, that they had identified, to give them a bit of ownership of it, and also because everyone in the class had a different thing that they needed to work. And one of the students came in and I said, "Okay.

What have you brought in to work on today?" And she said I brought my textiles homework." And I said, "W- we should really be working towards maths GCSE stuff in here." And she said, "Oh no. Wait till you see it." And she pulled it out, and her textiles A Level homework was six past paper questions from the textiles A Level course.

And they were all trigonometry and Pythagoras- ... questions. These were pa- questions that I could photocopy, give to my year nine students, and they wouldn't bat an eyelid. They wouldn't say, "Why are you making us do textiles?" Yeah. They would say, "Oh, great. A contextualized Pythagoras question. Thanks, sir."

But it was from the textiles course. There's a, I think there's a lot more crossover than a lot of teachers at secondary schools are able to recognize because there just isn't time- No ... and resource to- ... to root through other people's syllabuses- Yeah ... and to realize that what you're teaching is actually being taught in other classrooms in other departments.

Yes. And I think this sort of bleeds out into- there's the school trips. I think it's quite rare for a maths department to book a school trip or to book a speaker in from outside. And if they do book a speaker, it's specifically about maths usually. And I've had these conversations with maths teachers, and I've had separate conversations with museum educators and I've asked similar questions.

Maths teachers, I say, "Why don't you book maths trips or history speakers or something like that?" And they usually say either, "Oh, we do. We have this person come in every year," or, "We would do, but there aren't any."

Peter Rowlett: Yes.

Tom Briggs: And they really struggle to find them. And then I ask the museum educators, "Why don't you offer maths activities?"

And pa- and some of them say, "Oh, there, there isn't any maths in what we do," and they're wrong. But that's, I think, the feeling that a lot of people have about maths who are not already in, in the maths choir, and they're wrong, and they need someone to help them figure out that they're wrong and to fix that.

But also, a really common response is, "Oh, maths teachers don't want us to do anything." So we've got maths teachers saying, "I've looked, I can't find anything." And the people who provide these things saying "We thought about providing it, but nobody wants it." And there's a disconnect there.

And I think part of it is training and professional development and just exposing people to these ideas. And I mean that on bo- both sides of the camp. The maths teacher side, in order to, give them the experience with thinking about history as part of mathematics, as an embedded part of maths.

And also talking to people who might not be mathematicians, but are in a position to provide activities and things, trying to connect them together. Yeah. And I think that's quite difficult. But one of the things I have come across talking to maths teachers is that most maths teachers that I've spoken to have not experienced history of maths in any way.

It wasn't part of their undergraduate- ... degree. If they did a maths degree, a lot of maths teachers didn't do a maths degree- ... a, a minority of the ones who did a maths degree encountered some history of maths. I in- I did a history of maths module when I was at uni back in 2001 to 2004, and I came out of that maths module that history of maths module, with a feeling that it was a bit of a novelty module.

Yeah. It didn't cross my mind that history of maths was something that people studied- Yeah ... in earnest until 2020 or so when I met someone who introduced me to the BSHM. And I started to go to history of maths events and realized there was lots of people- ... who this is their life, this is their research, this is what they do, and it's fascinating.

But I've been open to that, and I didn't know about it until I met the right person.

Peter Rowlett: So if we accept then that it's more likely to happen if there's a link between the curriculum and the thing being offered, could you talk to me about that? Because you did this project with Jason where you brought in history into the curriculum.

Tom Briggs: Yeah. So our project was: for a half term leading up to Christmas, we taught my year seven and year eight classes according to the normal scheme of work of the school, but because we're both interested in history of maths, we made sure every single lesson had some history of maths content in it. So we didn't take time out of the curriculum, we taught the curriculum content using that as context.

And part of the thinking around this was, as a maths teacher, I have spent every single professional development opportunity that I've been to and every teacher training day being told that I, as a maths teacher, have sole responsibility for making maths interesting, in quotes. And showing them context and where maths turns up in other subjects and in the real world.

And the history of maths is one of these sort of really nice collections of knowledge and information that allow us to do that. And, we found, people can go and read the report if they like. It's just been published at the, through the BJHM, the British Journal for the History of Maths, and it's open access, which is nice.

But basically we found that in certain ways, the students fa- had better attitudes towards maths, had slightly better relationships with maths according to the metrics that we used, than the students in the rest of the year group who were not having sort of special history stuff added to their lessons.

It wasn't, I don't think it's conclusive. It wasn't an enormous cohort. It wasn't a longitudinal study, so there's all sorts of effects that we can't possibly account for. But we think that it does suggest that, that might be worth actually trying this stuff out.

Peter Rowlett: Yeah. And I think intuitively, without any evidence to back up what I'm about to say, it makes sense to me that there are people who like maths for maths, and they just wanna sit down and do a calculation and get a correct answer and feel lovely about themselves.

But there is a wider pool of people who might connect to it more deeply if they came across it in with these connections to other disciplines, with connections to art or history or whatever it is. That people are, we're gonna ... There's a diversity element, right? You're gonna engage a broader group of people.

Tom Briggs: Yeah. Yeah. There there's lots of reasons to be interested in mathematics, and only one of them is the doing of the mathematics. Yeah. And I think one of the things that we did find is it seemed to be in the project it seemed to help students recognize mathematics as a, a, a cultural, historical thing that's happened throughout time, rather than a collection of random things to remember that somebody somewhere thinks that they should just memorize and then regurgitate into an exam paper.

It helped to humanize it to a certain extent. And al- and also see it as not just a modern-day white bloke standing in front of you thing, but a- actually a lot of the students at the school that I was working at the time had a very high level of cultural diversity. And quite a few of the st- students seemed quite surprised and also interested that they could see their own cultural heritage reflected in what they were doing when normally there's no cultural heritage of any kind- in a lot of maths lessons because you're learning to do maths rather than learning about where maths came from.

Peter Rowlett: And if you are, it's 17th century white blokes, yeah, in Europe. Yeah, so Yeah. That's great. Thank you. That's been really interesting. Really useful chat.

Tom Briggs: Thank you very much.

Katie Steckles: Thanks again to Peter and Tom for their thoughts. To finish off this episode, Sam Holloway interviews local Maths Jam organisers, Sam Hartburn and Daniele Aurelio, about their monthly pub maths nights and how they've been Talking Maths in Pubs.

Sam Holloway: Welcome to this conversation around Maths Jam, the monthly Maths Jams that happen in various locations around the world.

What does it take to put one together? Who might get involved? And why might you want to get one started in your area if you haven't done so already? I'm joined by Sam and Daniele. We'll speak to them now. So Sam, can you please just give us a bit of an introduction to yourself?

Sam Hartburn: Yes. I am Sam Hartburn.

I'm a maths copy editor, proofreader, and creative mathematician. And I've been running the Canterbury Maths Jam with my sister Claire since, I think, about 2015.

Sam Holloway: Okay, thank you. And Daniele.

Daniele Aurelio: Okay. Hello, everybody, and thank you. My name is Daniele. I'm from Pavia in Italy, and I'm a physicist, so no mathematician here. And I've been running a Maths Jam in my local hometown in Pavia since 2017 or 2018, I think.

Sam Holloway: Okay, thank you. And I should also say, my name's Sam Holloway. I'm involved with the Cambridge Maths Jam. My partner Alison is the official organiser of that, and that's been going si- similar time, about since about 2010 or so.

So what we just say briefly, let's talk about what is a Maths Jam and when and where does it happen? So most of these things are a monthly event happening in usually a pub or a similar venue. There are currently 83 around the world, and many of them happen on the same night as each other, which is part of the fun.

So Sam, for your event, is there... do you follow the standard Maths Jam pattern when yours is hosted?

Sam Hartburn: No, we changed it. So the standard one is, I think, the penultimate Tuesday of the month. But for us, that didn't work for some of our members, so we changed ours to the fourth Monday of the month just so that we could get our regulars there.

Sam Holloway: Yes. So that's interesting. We'll talk about building up regulars then. Daniela, yours is, I think yours is on the standard Tuesday. Is that right?

Daniele Aurelio: Yes, it is. On the penultimate Tuesday every month.

Sam Holloway: Okay. And funnily enough, the Cambridge one is also one of the non-standard ones.

It's the day after the regular one. So it's not necessarily the penultimate Wednesday of the month, it's the day after the penultimate Tuesday of the month. Which if you try and put that into Google Calendar, it doesn't like it at all. So you- we talk about having the things, the events are- a lot of them are at the same time.

So how did you get started? So Sam how did you initially find out about Maths Jam, and what made you want to start one of your own?

Sam Hartburn: I think it all started going to a Festival of Spoken Nerd show where I saw about Matt Parker and learned about Maths Jam, and my sister and I went to the annual Maths Jam gathering, which is a similar thing, but different which we won't go into now.

But from that we learned about the monthly Maths Jams, and we thought it would be nice to do something nearby to us. So yeah, we just started it up and thought it'd be fun to get some people together in a pub doing maths on a more regular basis.

Sam Holloway: And how many do you have most months now?

Sam Hartburn: Most months, probably three or four. Occasionally go up a bit more. I think our biggest was something like 10 but that's very rare. It's usually four regulars and then occasionally one or two others.

Sam Holloway: Okay. Now, Daniele, I understand your size of group is quite different to that.

Is that right?

Daniele Aurelio: In Pavia on a typical Maths Jam we expect around 30 up to 40 people coming.

Sam Holloway: Wow.

Daniele Aurelio: I don't know why this happens probably because whenever the time comes I typically post some regular reminders of my event on on an event aggregator created by the, the city of Pavia, so that all the people who who are listed inside this sort of newsletter receive a, a reminder and that's why probably so many people come.

Sam Holloway: And ha- has it always been that popular? Did it, start off with that number and it continued, or is it something that's grown?

Daniele Aurelio: No, actually it's grown quite a bit. At the beginning only a few people came, mostly a group of my friends, so around 10 people at the most.

But then something changed and people started coming a bit more actually.

Sam Holloway: That's the it's interesting to see 'cause I think in the Cambridge Maths Jam, the very first one, there were over 20 people, and the first couple were bi- very busy like that. And then there was, this, so this is before COVID, 'cause obviously we m- might talk about that in a second how COVID changed things.

Before COVID, we used to get, 10, 15, 20 people. M- more recently, we're normally around five, six, something like that. And what we do find is it's, we have we have regulars. They don't come each month, though. So on a given month, we will have a group of three or four regulars from a larger pool, plus a couple of new people each time.

Do, so d- so Sam, do you find, do, do you, how often do you get people you've never met before coming along to your events?

Sam Hartburn: I'd say maybe once every four or five months. It's not that often. Though I have to admit, I have been a bit slack in advertising it over the last couple of years, so that's probably why we don't get many. There's definitely more that I could do to bring people along.

Sam Holloway: And what sort of people do you find come? 'Cause we have a... there's some ideas of what might be a typical MathsJam attendee, but who, who do you find the type of people you get at your events?

Sam Hartburn: We have a lot of maths teachers, and that's probably the vast majority, are maths teachers.

And then I think we've had a couple of PhD students, like maths PhD students. A couple of retired people who've done various things with their lives and then decided on retirement. They took up a bit more of an interest in maths that they maybe hadn't followed for a while. And yeah, that's probably pretty much the spectrum of people we get.

Sam Holloway: Yeah. D- Daniele, do you find it's

Daniele Aurelio: similar for you? Actually, yes. Mostly people gravitate around the local maths department or physics department. Plenty of former colleagues or friends. I'm- currently I'm a high school teacher, maths and physics high school teacher. Even a few colleagues - not necessarily from the, let's say, scientific side, but yeah, mostly from the university.

Sam Holloway: Okay. It's... I'd say it's similar in Cambridge. We, I'd say we have three groups in Cambridge that come and go. So we don't get that many students, certainly not undergraduate students. We did-- There was one set who joined us as they went through their degree, but they've long graduated.

We get a couple of PhD students sometimes. But mostly it's either local maths educators. The other group we get in Cambridge is, There's a lot of IT tech industries, my sort of own background. So lots of people from IT and tech in and around Cambridge, and I think the recreational maths side of MathsJam appeals to them quite a lot.

So we get quite a few people on, on that background. Yeah, we talk about MathsJam as being, it's not a form of outreach, but it's for people who already like maths. Do you find - Daniele, do you find it is mostly like that? Have you managed to convert anyone who's come along and it's been really not at all what they expected?

Daniele Aurelio: Probably because as you were saying one of the remarkable things about recreational mathematics is that it brings together- People with very different backgrounds. And so some participants may have a formal training in mathematics, while others may simply enjoy, riddles, or strategy games, or abstract games, or problem-solving even, abstract as that.

Whenever I see new faces at my local Maths Jam, I typically, reach their table and try to explain what a Maths Jam is and what they should expect from that evening. And one of the points I stress a lot is that what matters most there is not expertise, but curiosity and willingness to engage.

Sam Holloway: Sam what are your favourite things to do then if someone new turns up to your Maths Jam? What are your favourite things to do to give them a, a, a good idea of what's involved and why they might want c- want to come back again next time?

Sam Hartburn: So we've got a few sort of physical puzzles.

A Rubik's Cube. We've got a few puzzles which are made of pieces that you have to fit together in a certain way, and things like that, which are always nice to get out which somebody can puzzle away with while listening to the conversation as well. So we quite often do that.

We've got a few favourite games that we play Set and Tantrix and an estimation game. So they're always good when new people come along because you don't then have to think of conversation and sort of work things out. It's just quite easy to settle in and play a game with somebody new and get to know each other through that.

And then we also have the monthly Shout each month, which is basically an A4 page with a selection of puzzles and games and activities to do on it that have been created for Maths Jam organisers. So there's a new one each month, and it's always a really nice variety of things. So there'll always be, like, something that you'll like on there.

So we quite often use that as a focus point for the whole session, and then build other things around it.

Sam Holloway: Yeah. I think this, it's worth us talking about Maths Jam Shout, isn't it? Because so yeah, this is a this is f- put together usually by one of the Maths Jam localities, locations, groups and then that's coordinated and sent out to all the Maths Jam organisers before the event.

And it's supposed to be fresh and, no one sees it until it gets out at Maths Jam. Yes. Have you have either of you ever, have you ever put one together yourself before?

Daniele Aurelio: Yes, actually, a few years ago, probably in, during the During our first year here in Pavia a friend and I put together a few puzzles Josephus problem, and then some more, amenities to think about

Sam Holloway: I, I think we've never managed to get one together at Cambridge.

So I think we should def- we should definitely do that. Any- Is it worth talking about who Maths Jam isn't for? Is there any, So we say it's not it's not for children, it's not for under 18s, and that's largely because certainly in the UK, the Maths Jams were traditionally held, and many of them still are held on licensed premises in a pub.

So Sam, have you found with your one is that the case? – that children can't come to your one because it's in a pub, or- how does it work for you?

Sam Hartburn: Yeah. It is in a pub, but I think in generally we wouldn't encourage children to come along because children have lots of opportunities to do maths and this is an opportunity for adults to come and do maths without children.

It's great fun doing maths with children. I'm not knocking that. But it's just an opportunity for adults to do like recreational maths without having to... I've lost what I was gonna say. It's,

Sam Holloway: yeah, it's an opportunity for, yeah, it- the idea is for adults to come together to do maths because, children can do that sort of thing in other groups, and it's just, it's an opportunity for that without having to get too distracted.

But actually let's talk about being distracted. Do you find sometimes, obviously it's nice to have a chat about things other than maths. It's a social event. Do you ever find a topic steers off to, to other areas? I know, so as- I'll give you an example. In Cambridge, because there's a lot of IT software people, we do tend to find we end up talking about computer science problems.

And I think that's, I think that might be a thing that's quite specific to our jam. Do you find at your own ones there are sort of deviations?

Sam Hartburn: Yeah. We're often talking about education in general, and probably maybe not that much else. We have, have the occasional knitting and crochet conversation, but I guess there's maths in that anyway, so-

Sam Holloway: Yeah. That counts- the crafting, yeah ...

Sam Hartburn: We'll count that as maths.

Sam Holloway: So Daniele, when you started, how did you, what did you do when you were starting your Maths Jam, and what, why was it you wanted to start one and how did you get it going?

Daniele Aurelio: Okay interesting question. Back in 2017, I read about MathJam for the first time in an Italian web zine Rudi Matematici, a group of physicists and engineers who write about the math puzzles in Italian, unfortunately.

And I read about MathJam actually, I read about a new MathJam which had just opened in Turin. And I thought to myself that's nice. I would like to attend." But unfortunately, Turin is almost two hours away from my place. So I thought it might take a while for me to go there, to drive up to Turin, and then come back during the night.

Instead of giving up, I wrote an email to Katie and introduced myself and asked whether it was possible for me to open a new MathJam here in Pavia. And she kindly replied that it was indeed possible, and told me what to do. So essentially, what I had to do was to find a suitable place.

She suggested the pub, and that's what I selected. Here in Pavia, we have a sort of a board game pub called Valhalla. And I went there and tried to explain why people should want to go to a pub to enjoy maths and riddles and puzzles And Andrea, the, the guy who runs the place- Yeah

was allured by the idea, and that's how it started. So in September 2018, we had our first Math Jam put together hastily because I wanted to start and see what was going on.

Sam Holloway: Yeah. It's good to get going. A- and it's, it sounds like in, in your case you had quite good numbers, and it grew from there.

So Sam, same thing for you. How did... What was it you actually did to get started, those, those first couple of events?

Sam Hartburn: So I think the biggest thing for me was that my sister and I set it up together, so we knew that if no one else came along, we would have each other there. So if you are starting a Math Jam, I would definitely recommend finding a friend who will come along with you so that you're not sat in a pub by yourself just in case nobody comes along.

But I think we put, we printed out some flyers, which we took to the local university departments, and I think we left some in libraries, and we put things on Twitter, as it was then, Facebook, different social media to try and get in touch with people. And yeah, then we just turned up and hoped that some people would come up, basically.

And luckily enough a few did.

Sam Holloway: So now you're into the swing of things. You're running your monthly Math Jams. What do you do each month? So what do you have to do before the jam, during the jam, after it? What what... As the organiser, what are your own responsibilities? Daniele, we'll start with you.

Daniele Aurelio: Okay. Every month, I print a few copies of the monthly shout. So that's, I know a lot of places, a lot of Math Jams simply hand out the PDF. But in my case, I do not. I never gathered the cell phone numbers of our attendees, so I prefer to print a few copies of the shelf.

I also collect a few problems which I like and put them on a page which I call the evening menu. And I bring it to the place for people to share and try their hand at the puzzles. And I also bring a few games and puzzles I have here at home. Mostly abstract games, meaning from chess to checkers, and even more obscure ones, I don't know Zertz or Kwale or Mancala games.

I already have them here, so I simply put them in a trolley and I bring it with me to the venue. And actually that's it. So I simply have to ask Andrea, the, the guy who runs the venue whether the date, so the, the penultimate Tuesday is okay with him because they have a few events happening at the, the local at the local pub.

And if that works for him, then we're done. We can finally gather.

Sam Holloway: Okay. So Sam, I think what we're hearing then is obviously on the night itself it's quite busy and there's some prep work. Do you find there's much else you need to do in the rest of the month? Or, if someone's thinking of starting one it's basically concentrated around that?

Sam Hartburn: Yeah, there's not a lot to do really. I have a mailing list of people who have signed up to be notified about Maths Jam. So I usually send an email out a week before just to confirm that it's going ahead, and I will- ... send the shoutout to people as a PDF, but I do print it out as well. I have a bag that lives under my desk of Maths Jam stuff, which has things like scissors, Sellotape, pencils, calculator, coloured pencils.

So I always take that along, and then I'll throw in a few games, like different games each month and different puzzles each month. And yeah, there's not a lot else to do really. It's quite straightforward. It's just having an email address, replying to anyone who gets in touch to ask about it, and making sure you're there on the night with all the bits and pieces.

Sam Holloway: It sounds, yeah, it sounds quite manageable. So- Yeah ... if you're listening to this and you're thinking, "I'd quite like to start a Maths Jam," first of all, check mathsjam.com. There is a list of where the existing events are. There's no reason why you can't have one too close to another one, but it might be worth seeing, going, if you've never attended one, it is probably worth going to experience one before you, you start your own.

What, so what practicalities what sort of tips would you give to someone who's thinking of starting one, based on what you've learnt over the past few years?

Sam Hartburn: I'd say try to find a pub that's reasonably quiet or a venue that's reasonably quiet and has good lighting and reasonably sized tables just so that you can spread out and everything, and you can actually see what you're doing and have a friend to take along.

I think that's my biggest tip for if you're starting out.

Sam Holloway: Yeah, I like that idea. Daniele, any particular tips you'd give to people who are thinking of starting Maths Jam for the first time?

Daniele Aurelio: Probably have fun and enjoy yourself because one of the main concerns is I don't know, what if I don't understand everything?

What if it doesn't work for me? This is perfectly fine. No one understands everything immediately, so just it's part of the fun. Just be there and try to enjoy yourself.

Sam Holloway: Yep, that's exactly what it's all about. Yeah, if you want to get involved you're thinking of starting one, check mathsjam.com for where the existing events are, and you can email Katie Steckles on katie@mathsjam.com.

If you're interested in starting your own, Katie will give you some more information, and you can begin everything there. Each Jam has a page on mathsjam.com. You don't have to go and set up your own webpage. There's a system there you can use, isn't there, to put the dates in and the locations and things like that?

Sam Hartburn: Yeah, that's right, and it's all there's a template. So Katie will set up the page initially. She'll also give you an email address, which will be yourtown@mathsjam.com, which will forward to your or ordinary email. And then you can edit the webpage yourself to, if you have any change of dates, if you can't do a particular date for some reason, then you can go on and edit

Sam Holloway: Yeah, so you're not having to set all that up.

That's provided for you by Ka- yeah, Katie centrally- Yeah ... in Maths Jam. Most of the Maths Jams are on BlueSky, some on Instagram with photos, so do ... You can get a good idea of what's going on with those. Daniele, Sam, thank you very much for joining us. Good luck with your next and forthcoming Maths Jams.

Daniele Aurelio: Thanks very much.

Sam Hartburn: Thank you.

Katie Steckles: Thanks again to Sam, Sam, and Daniele for taking the time to share with us. That's all for this episode of the Talking Maths in Public podcast. Head to talkingmathsinpublic.uk/podcast for more episodes, to suggest your ideas for future podcast segments, and to find out more about the TMIP network. Tune into the next episode for more maths comm stories

Matt Parker: The Talking Maths in Public podcast is presented and edited by Katie Steckles and funded by the International Center for the Mathematical Sciences. The music is For Her by Liderc on Pixabay. This has been a Matt Parker announcement.