Last week, ten Year 10 students attended the Girls Do The Maths Day at UNSW with Ms Mc Grath and Ms Laumberg. This event was for Years 10, 11 and 12 students from across Sydney, with 34 attending schools and over 300 participants. It aims to encourage and uplift girls in mathematics for a female-only day. 

The day started with a speech from Dr Inge Koch – Associate Dean, Mathematical Sciences, RMIT – who gave insight into where her maths journey started and where it has led her, discussing ideas including how maths is being used to detect cancer, and pre-cancerous cells.

Throughout the day we were lucky enough to hear from other speakers, including Dr Anna Romanov and Mareike Dressler, who talked of their use of maths in their fields of study. They discussed maths in symmetry, optimisation, and even the fourth dimension!

The first rotation was spent learning about game theory using mathematics, where we studied simple games and saw the complicated maths behind the strategies to win them. 

Next, we were fortunate enough to get a full tour of the expansive UNSW campus. It was incredible to see all of the state-of-the-art facilities that are open to students, and the vast array of different social activities for them. It was very informative, and a wonderful part of the day.

The last activity was walking around the auditorium to small stalls run by UNSW maths students to learn about a certain mathematical topic. One of them was run by a former Emanuel student, and his stall was explaining optimisation in 4D. Just before we left, we listened in on a Q&A with current and former mathematics students. We were very lucky to attend this day and we hope next year’s attendees enjoy it too!

By Liberty Waldner