Mathematics and Statistics - OU Community Online

Get ready to quiz OU academics on the issues that matter to you.

This is your time to drive conversation with some of Britain’s leading academics. Simply vote on our Facebook Poll, let us know which of our inspiring academics you’d like Desk Time with, and log back in on Friday (12-2pm) to ask the questions that really matter to you.

Vote on the poll now: http://on.fb.me/15ZtpeR

The three academics are - in no particular order:

Katie Chicot - Infinity
Questions around infinity have helped mathematicians to solve some very practical problems. OU Mathematician Katie Chicot is ready to explore the mysteries and misconceptions of infinity with you, from ancient puzzles to the latest mathematical research.

Kristina Hultgren - Communication
The OU’s linguistics expert Kristina is looking at how communications have changed over the last few decades, and what different countries can tell us about socio-cultural, economic and political changes in the way we communicate.

Ellie Dommett - Cognitive Enhancement
Recent news reports estimate that 10% of university students take smart-drugs to improve brain performance. Dr Ellie Dommett is ready to discuss the impact these drugs have on the brain, and what questions we should be asking to inform the choice on smart drugs.

Posted on 22 July 2013.

 The OU Careers Advisory Service will be running an online forum for OU students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) to help you plan your next career steps.

The forum, which will run from Monday 8 April to Friday 3 May 2013 will be moderated by a careers adviser, and each week there will be a number of people participating from the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths Network (STEMNET) Ambassadors Scheme. These are people who work in the STEM sectors, and who give their time to help students studying those subjects to find out more about the career opportunities available.

This is a unique opportunity we have organised for Open University students, so we encourage you to make the most of the chance to draw on the advice and information that will be available to you.

Questions can be on any topic related to your career planning e.g.

• What career options are available with a degree in a STEM subject?
• How can I get work experience?
• What are the benefits of further study?
• Is age a problem for career changers?
• Where can I find job vacancies?

To access the forum go to the Careers Workspace on or after 8th April using your OU computer username and password.  After the forum closes the content will be available in read-only format for a further year.

 Posted 27 March 2013

A recent study reveals that only 6 per cent of the UK’s maths professors are women. Commissioned by the Women in Mathematics Committee of the London Mathematical Society, whose chair is the OU’s Professor Gwyneth Stallard, it reveals that maths has “the most skewed gender balances of any university subject.”

The findings, published in the Guardian (G2) reveal some startling statistics for female mathematicians. Women and girls make up:
• 40% of A-level maths students (although fewer take further maths)
• 42% of those studying for a first degree in maths
• 29% of researchers
• 19% at doctorate level
• 6% professorships.

Professor Stallard suggests that the problem, revealed in the first gender survey of UK mathematics departments, is one of career progression once women “get a foot on the academic ladder.” And that is despite women choosing to study mathematics in larger numbers than ever before.

Christie Marr, deputy director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, appears to concur. She believes that in a field where new research is constantly emerging it is difficult for women to stay ahead if they have taken a break to have a family. “In maths you go off and have kids and when you come back, the landscape has changed. It’s a hierarchical subject where every layer builds on earlier layers, so it can be extremely difficult to catch up.”

The Guardian article does, however, offer some hope. Earlier this year the Research Council UK announced grant funding would be conditional on effective equality programmes and there are plans for more support and networking for women studying and teaching maths. The Newton Institute is hosting a two-day Women in Mathematics event where senior female mathematicians will present and there will be career advice on combining work and family.

To find out more:
• Read the Guardian article in full
• Download the gender survey of UK mathematics departments
• Gwyneth Stallard, Professor of Pure Mathematics
• Join in the Mathematics and Statistics OU online community

Posted 22 March 2013
 

Today, more than ever, statistics is part of our lives. Introducing Statistics is the OU’s first ever Level 1 module specifically in statistics.

Its introduction not only ensures a full compliment of maths and statistics modules at Level 1, it also ensures statistics is an integral part of all our undergraduate provision at Levels 1, 2 and 3.

In the module (M140) you will learn how to use basic statistical tools and quantitative methods that are useful in business, government, industry, medicine, the economy and most academic subjects.

Using data from a range of applications, you’ll learn practical statistical techniques and fundamental principles.

Find out more about the content, what you will learn and how to register.

Join the mathematics and statistics online community.

Listen to Tim Harford on his regular OU / BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less where he "explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life."

Posted 19 March 2013
 

The Open University maths department are hosts of a lecture at the OU with a range of exciting experiments conducted by Dr Hugh Hunt, a Senior Lecturer from the Engineering Department of Cambridge University and a recognised expert in gyroscopes and boomerangs.

Dr Hunt leads a fun filled session showcasing a range of exciting experiments and games designed to explore questions such as; why does a spinning top stand up? Why doesn't a rolling wheel fall over? Why is top-spin so effective in tennis? How does a falling cat always manage to land on its feet? How can the Hubble Space Telescope turn around in space? What do ice-skaters do to spin so fast?

Dr Hunt will also look closely at the common threads that link all spinning things but in a light hearted and fascinating way that won’t require high powered maths, just an appetite for fun and the help of lots of lots of toys and videos. Perhaps even the odd boomerang:
 

Find out more:

• Watch the lecture
• Study maths with the OU

Often, when I say to people that I'm studying for a mathematics degree with the OU, they tell me how useless maths is, which is nice of them.

"I've forgotten all the maths I ever learnt at school but I've never needed it," they say. I'm not sure how they've survived. They'd probably own up to being able to add and subtract, multiply and divide, but almost all of the GCSE/O level syllabus is useful in daily life. For a start, if you want to work out how much the banks will fleece you for using a credit card you need percentages and fractions. If you want to understand the graphs of Tory cuts you need a little statistics. If you want to enjoy the Great British Bake Off you need to appreciate pi.

But at degree level things are different. The stuff you learn is probably only useful if you're going to be working in a maths environment, as a programmer or a scientist or an actor on The Big Bang Theory. It's difficult to see how i, the square root of -1, which doesn't actually exist except in maths, can help down the supermarket. A lot of what I learned last year in MST209 Mathematical method and models won't ever be put into use unless, come the revolution, I need to calculate the trajectory of a mortar. But in my next module all this might change. Before then I still had the previous course to finish and yesterday, while sitting its examination, I had a genuinely new OU experience.

Exam time is usually stressful and much of that is a result of the way that the OU structures its course results. Unless you're new to the OU you'll know that your overall module mark is whichever is worse, your course work score or your exam score. Back in 1997, on my first module - an object-oriented programming course - I was unaware of this. I assumed that having achieved coursework in the high 90s I'd only need to turn up for the exam and do moderately well to pass the module with a decent mark. Overconfidence is rarely rewarded. I hardly revised, which, as you might have guessed, turned out to be a huge mistake.

'It was the first exam that didn't start with five minutes of blind panic. I should've worn shorts and flipflops and taken along a couple of cocktails'

The programming module was in its first year of presentation, which I've since learnt is always a gamble. First, you don't have access to a stack of past exam papers, but also some new modules have teething problems and this course had a set of gnashers like Shane McGowan. The exam paper was an absolute stinker, requiring me to remember not just facts from the course books but examples too, which of course I didn't. One question was a fill-in-the-blanks type affair with so many empty spaces that I could have completed it with a limerick about a man from Nantucket. Rather than passing the module with the distinction that I should easily have managed, I ended up with a Grade Three. And this was a bit embarrassing for me on an object-oriented programming course because at the time I was working as a full-time object-oriented programmer.

In all the modules since then I've always managed Grade Two or above but this year's course - M208 Pure mathematics - has presented new difficulties, most of which are due to the bike ride. Because OU maths courses (and only maths courses) require assignments to be sent via snail mail my tutor's comments were posted home, meaning that I had no access to them. As a result of repeatedly making the same kinds of error throughout the module I can now only achieve Grade Three at best even if I were to score 100% in the exam.

The genuinely new OU experience was that, without the pressure to perform, the revision process and yesterday's exam were much more relaxed. This time I really did only need to do moderately well and it wouldn't affect my overall score. The chilled atmosphere was aided by being able to take along the course handbook to the exam as well as annotate it, which feels a bit like cheating but I'll take all the help I can. It was the first exam that didn't start with five minutes of blind panic. I should've worn shorts and flipflops and taken along a couple of cocktails.

Now that M208 lies behind me I'm excited about my next module, which started before M208 finished. MT365 Graphs, networks and design is a problem-solving course and one of those problems is to find the best route from Land's End to John o'Groats. While those two towns aren't on next year's itinerary I hope I can use the same techniques to find the shortest distance between 2013's capitals. For the majority of the route, the best order to visit the cities is clear but there's a not so obvious section involving Kiev, Belarus, Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin and Moscow and hopefully MT365 can help to keep the mileage down. Who says maths is useless?

 

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of blogs, wikis, social networking and information-sharing websites out there?

Help is at hand with a new Handbook of Social Media for researchers, developed by OU Computing academics Shailey Minocha and Marian Petre.

It provides a wide-ranging overview of social media sites and tools that are useful for research and includes the results of interviews with social media users.

The Handbook, funded through Vitae Innovate is aimed primarily at postgraduate and early career researchers and their supervisors.

Download the Handbook of Social Media free.