HNC STUDENTS EXPLORE THE MYSTERIES OF MATHS & HOW IT IS NEVER A ‘SAFE BET’
05.12.2025HNC A Level Mathematics students recently welcomed Professor Niall Mackay from the University of York who delivered two incredibly fascinating guest lectures about the magic and the mystery of maths.
Our Year 12 students experienced two different, but both incredibly inspiring, sessions. The first was titled ‘How to bet and (why you probably won’t) win’ which looked at how maths is used by the betting industry to ensure that they are always the real winners, including the use of probability theory and odds and implied probability.
The second was a workshop on the Collatz Conjecture, a major unsolved problem in maths which asks whether repeating two simple arithmetic operations will eventually transform every positive integer into 1. The group then had a go at solving it for themselves – you can take a look at the result in the image below.
Professor Mackay has had a fascinating career and specialises in Mathematical Physics, in Operations Research and Military History, and in Applied Statistics, including forecasting and probability scoring and also gave our students insight into the fascinating careers a maths specialism can lead to, and answered questions about degree level study.
Chris Smith, Teacher of Maths and Enrich Lead comments: “Studying maths can genuinely be both magical and mindblowing – and these two very different sessions were a great example of that with students able to see how maths makes sure that the gambling industry are always the winners and how that despite all we know about the rules of maths, it still has its unique mysteries that have challenged and puzzled the most brilliant of mathematicians for years. Professor Mackay has some unique and fascinating specialisms, and it was genuinely inspiring for our students to hear from him and be able to ask their questions. We’d like to say huge thank you to Professor Mackay for these two hugely enjoyable sessions.”
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