Maths Tutoring - Hannah Jones

Today I have the whole day stretching in front of me and 100s of things on my to-do list, so I am procrastinating by writing this because perhaps it’ll be helpful!

I realised that I was feeling the same overwhelm that our kids feel when faced with a pile of revision.

So, I’m going to take my own advice and go for a walk to clear my head because I know I’ll come back feeling better and more focused.

I jazzed up my YouTube Channel pics this week.

I was never trying to make it big on YouTube.
Many of my videos are marked for kids and therefore don't have ads.
It is a fabulous reminder of how my 223 videos on YouTube have attracted lots subscribers over the years I have been posting.

Knowing what you don't know is half of the battle when it comes to revising for a test and this is why finding the right questions at the right time are crucial to growing confidence.

This summer I am sharing with my students a set of questions that cover the whole GCSE curriculum with a mental health warning:
"THESE QUESTIONS ARE TRICKY"
In fact these questions are some of the trickiest versions of the topics they are from. This is why I do three things
Answer each of these questions myself thinking of the different methods students often use.
Create worked answers in a PDF, sometimes with more than one method.
Video the worked examples with extra explanations.

While my students know that there will be lots of these questions they are unlikely to be able to answer first time, they also know how to use worked examples to learn what they don't know.

Comment "YES" below if you want my worked examples PDF.

www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk

What emotions do the words
'Maths Test'
conjure up for you?

Don’t believe everything your maths teacher tells you…

Hannah Cairo, a 17-year-old mathematical prodigy from the Bahamas, stunned the mathematical world by refuting the long-standing Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture that had challenged experts for four decades. "After months of trying to prove the result, I managed to understand why it was so difficult. I realized that if I used that information correctly, I might be able to refute the claim," Cairo explains about her breakthrough moment.

While taking classes at UC Berkeley as a high school student, she became obsessed with this problem in harmonic analysis after her professor, Ruixiang Zhang, included it as an optional homework challenge. Despite her youth, she approached the problem with remarkable persistence, eventually constructing a counterexample using fractals. "It took me a while to convince Ruixiang Zhang that my proposal was actually correct," she recalls, highlighting the initial skepticism her revolutionary approach encountered.

Cairo's passion for mathematics began early in life. "I always wanted to be a mathematician, but I didn't really know what it meant until I learned abstract algebra from books," she shares. "When I was 13 or 14, I wrote a paper on number theory, but it dealt with a problem that nobody cared about," she recalls with a laugh. Ultimately, she found her calling in harmonic analysis, where "everything is made up of waves. You can build anything with them, if you use the right number of waves."

After presenting her findings at the prestigious International Congress on Harmonic Analysis in Spain, Cairo will begin her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland this fall under Zhang's supervision. "He helped me so much, and I'm really grateful. Beyond his class, which I loved, he spent countless hours tutoring me," she says of her mentor. Beyond her mathematical brilliance, Cairo is deeply committed to teaching, stating that her vocation is "to help other people, to make them happy" through the beauty and challenge of mathematics.

To read more about Hannah and her new discovery in El Pais, visit https://bit.ly/3I8nTUU

To introduce kids to more trailblazing women mathematicians, we highly recommend the picture books "Nothing Stopped Sophie" (https://www.amightygirl.com/nothing-stopped-sophie), "A Computer Called Katherine" (https://www.amightygirl.com/a-computer-called-katherine), "The Girl With A Mind For Math" (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-girl-with-a-mind-for-math), "Maryam’s Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani" (https://www.amightygirl.com/maryam-s-magic), all for ages 5 to 9

For older kids, there's a stunning introduction to seven pioneering women in math, "Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math" for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/grasping-mysteries

For children's books about math-loving Mighty Girls, visit our blog post "12 Picture Books About Mighty Girls Who Love Math," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=20118

And for our favorite math toys and games to encourage girls' love of math at every age, visit our blog post "Add It Up! Top 35 Math Toys for Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12180

I had the honour and privilege to teach this remarkable young man.
My lasting memory is of his dry wit. It always had me smiling from ear to ear.

TV star and campaigner who 'changed countless lives' dies aged 19 Jonathan Bryan's campaigned to give a "voice to the voiceless".