Forest School hosted the Maths Off Piste 2017 event on Thursday 19 October. Gifted and talented pupils from many schools were invited and Braeside pupils Karishma, Amna, Isobel and Elicia attended the event with Mrs Alahi.
The guest speaker was Dr Jennifer Rogers, a lead statistician whose research is used to help analyse medical conditions such as heart failure, epilepsy and cancer.
As a statistician, it’s Jenifer’s job to decide whether any differences she sees in data are likely to be just by chance, or whether they are ‘statistically significant’. With new treatments available, this sort of information is invaluable.
Correlation vs Causation were also addressed, with the question: Were more deaths caused by Crocodiles OR Hippopotamuses; Baseball OR Cheerleading; Cycling OR Cars.
“The speaker was very inspirational to listen to, and she made me think about how maths and statistics are used in everyday life.” Isobel
“The trip was fascinating because I learnt that statisticians study ways to collect, summarise and draw conclusions from important data.” Karishma
