Florence Nightingale Day

On Wednesday 7th of January, twelve Year 11 maths students embraced the spirit of Florence Nightingale day by attending a day of lectures and challenges at Lancaster University. The highlight for our students was claiming first prize in a series of challenging mathematical problems, competing against other High Schools and Sixths Forms from across the North West. We also got a real insight into careers using maths within academic research. We explored how mathematical modelling can be used in with the health industry to assess the potential of new treatments for wound healing and how probability modelling using differential equations can be used to predict the spread of infectious disease within the sphere of epidemiology. There was also a fascinating discussion around cryptography and post-quantum e-voting systems. It was great to see where the maths we are learning every day could lead is in the future.