Every day, we make decisions based on our assessment of the risks involved in situations we encounter and the probability which we think applies to those risks. But how realistic are these judgements?

In this conference, students will use mathematics to help them think more clearly about the risks that we face, and which we hear about in the media. They will deconstruct newspaper reports covering stories such as the risks of vaccination, new wonder drugs, lucky lottery winners, the rate of teenage pregnancies, and so on.

Students will be introduced to special relativity, and will look at the differences between Galileo's concept of motion and that used in special relativity. In the afternoon session, students will carry out practical investigations of the geometrical properties of curved surfaces. This conference has been offered in previous years, but will be further developed this year in the light of previous experience.

David Berman, University of London

This is a one-day 6th form masterclass, to be held on 5 February 2008, 10am -3pm.
It is aimed at students who are familiar with matrix and vector multiplication (scalar product only, vector product won't be required).