Tim Muffett of BBC Breakfast interviewed students and teachers at north London’s Anson Primary School, which has a novel solution to the problem – teach the parents!

Teachers at Anson School have produced short video snippets outlining key principles that parents can watch with their offspring and so become a constructive part of the homework process.

The idea that Anson Primary School is teaching the wrong people is wide of the mark. As we know well at Maths-Whizz – the most engaged and motivated students have engaged and motivated parents.

A child whose mother enjoys a subject, or is confidently able to assist him with homework, will be more inclined to see value in the subject, to do well at school, and to ask for constructive help.

This is something we’ve been fostering with Maths-Whizz for some time.

The circle of learning with Maths-Whizz

Our home and schools maths tutoring services promote communication between parents, teachers, and students – parents experience our animated tutor with their children, teachers discuss student reports with parents, and kids tend to talk to one another about toys, pets, and our Challenge feature.

[BBC News]

The paper in question purports to describe odds of the author finding his ‘perfect partner’ as 1 in 285,000. To haul the paper marginally out of author Peter Backus’ navel he derives this figure with a personal variation on the Drake Equation, which describes the possibility of our galaxy harbouring communicating civilisations [click the link to see a nice interactive explanation of how the Drake Equation works].

The God of Whizz is as much a fan of whimsical investigations as the next educational deity, and very much a fan of how simple maths problems can shine light on apparently intractable problems.

But Backus’ paper is good only as a promotional piece with an apparently depressing result. Even so, it has generated a lot of publicity, thanks to the idea that Backus has hit upon some kind of magical equation for love (or the lack thereof).

The Drake Equation is a neat exercise in the effects of multiplying odds when you’re combining known and unknown values and an oft-heard criticism is that multiplying possibilities multiplies the possibility for error.

Backus’ equation substitutes Drake’s little-known vastnesses of space and time for the guesswork values of physical and emotional attachment. The error bar alongside his final number must be so wide as to make it usable only as an exercise in basic maths.

We can see a response to Backus’ huge odds against love in the anthropic principle. It is often said that the universe is fantastically unlikely ever to have taken shape, let alone to have allowed the development of intelligent life. And yet, we’re here.

The anthropic principle inverts this. It says, simply*, that the fact we’re here means it’s possible. The same argument meets Backus’ paper with the simple observation: “even ugly, picky people in small towns fall in love”, which becomes what I call the Amatory Principle (something I’ve just made up).

The Amatory Principle notes that people find love, all the time, everywhere, and in the unlikeliest of circumstances. It’s a staple of fiction, but it’s also true. Happiness in love is out there, ergo happiness in love is possible and whatever statistical rules say otherwise must be adjusted.

The punchline to all this is that Backus has a girlfriend! This is just fine, of course, because Backus has proved the Amatory Principle.

The grump in me says that I couldn’t give a fig if the whole exercise was for fun, because it has been laundered through various media as something of value, touching on the ineffable figures that underpin our lives, even if just with a nod and a wink.

I feel for the University of Warwick press officer charged with raising their employer’s profile as a seat of learning with a four-page bit of fun put out by a post-graduate. I would exhort him or her to watch the fascinating new BBC documentary series with Jim Al-Khalili looking at chaos, fractals and the equations that really DO say something about life on earth (if not the chances of dating a nice London girl).

* Because I’m not clever enough to say what the complex version of the Anthropic Principle (Weak or Strong versions**) is.

** Google them if you really want to know

The Radio 4 programme, broadcast last weekend, features Lenny Henry talking to the likes of Carol Vorderman and Neurologist Brian Butterworth in an effort to get the root of our apparent national distaste for numbers.

In Henry’s case his distaste for, or discomfort with, maths probably has its origins in an uncaring teacher and the implication that he was intellectually inferior for his problems with the subject.

But part of the problem, as Vorderman notes in the programme, is a seeming comfort with innumeracy and a willingness to admit it to others. This attitude doesn’t seem to prevail in other developed nations, but it’s hard to put your finger on why this might be a particularly British tendency.

The great C.P. Snow lamented something parallel to this half a century ago with his famous ‘Two Cultures’ lecture on the gulf between the arts and the sciences. He famously commented:

Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

Maybe the answer to this cultural gap, and our more personal problems with numbers is twofold – first, einstate a sense of pride in maths; after all, maths underpinned the engineering successes of the Victorian age and the advances of British scientists in the 20th Century.

Second, rediscover the joy of numbers, just as the wonderful TV mathematician Johnny Ball did with Think of a Number. This requires not that we teach maths in trivial or flippant ways – rigour is still vital – but that we try hard to give students the sense that they can play with numbers, and see the patterns that appear in everything from card games to particle physics.

And maybe the first step is a shot of top-flight online maths tutoring. We can only hope!

This is great news for Xavier, and testament presumably to his early devotion to maths, and ability to study and revise to pass the exams with flying colours.

His achievement is a case in point in that maths ability is individual, personal, and that students can excel if those personal requirements are recognised and met.

Our maths tutoring services do exactly this. Whilst we can’t take the credit for Xavier’s success (not least because we teach up to Year eight) we might echo some of the sentiments expressed by Xavier’s tutor Mike Ryde.

We genuinely believe it is better to offer children the opportunity to take these examinations across their academic career as opposed to cramming them all in at the end of the one year.

If a child wants to move forward and enjoys the subject then it is cruel to hold them back.

Dr Ryde told BBC News that a lot of damage can be done when schools will not let a child move forward at their own pace. This is an exaggeration, but it is nevertheless broadly true.

A school that tries to fit a class full of square pegs into the round hole of a rigid curriculum will likely fail to recognise the range of strengths and weaknesses in a class and all will suffer.

Many parents have turned to Maths-Whizz for precisely this reason. You can give our free maths lessons a try.

often scared of basic numeracy and should be required to study English and maths at A-level

…according to a report by the moderate conservative Politeia think-tank.

The report, titled ‘Teachers Matter’ focuses on entry standards for teachers. An author, David Burghes, of the University of Plymouth, said:

One of the issues that bedevils our teaching profession, and particularly my subject of mathematics, is that of the inadequate subject knowledge of teachers.

But Nansi Ellis, head of education policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, countered:

As well as knowing their subject, teachers need to understand the different ways children learn and develop.

Instead of hysterical reports of so-called under-educated teachers we should have a proper debate about the skills and knowledge teachers need to be good at teaching children.

The report goes on to argue that central control and management of teachers is damaging the profession, but the department for Children, Schools and Families strongly criticised the comments.

From this corner, it seems that questions about the qualifications of teachers will never go away. Commenters from both sides of the political divide will argue that life experience and teaching knowledge are more important than academic bona-fides, whilst others will argue that degree- or A-level knowledge is vital to ensure good teaching in that particular subject.

I’m inclined to hedge my bets on this one. I had excellent teachers whose passion was fuelled by their deep understanding of the subjects they taught, and I had dull teachers whose poor teaching seemed a direct result of their academic immersion.

In earlier years, I remember most the teachers who showed vigour and interest, but it was easy to spot teachers who were less confident in particular subjects. I’d like to think that the love of teaching must come first – a motivated and bright teacher can be taught fluency in a subject that isn’t her own, but a knowledgeable teacher isn’t necessarily willing to be motivated. I know that not all teachers want to tackle subjects they didn’t learn beyond GCSE – the teacher training process should identify those people and ensure they are pushed towards areas they are comfortable with.

A teacher who is dull, or even disparaging, about a subject can sometimes do more damage than good. Feel free to comment!

For proof of this, you need only look at the multi-billion-pound gambling industry. Bookmakers and casinos profit because we find it hard to evaluate odds and probabilities. I am reminded of an intelligent friend who couldn’t understand that buying two different tickets doubled your chances of winning the lottery with one ticket, but that you had to buy 14 million different tickets to be pretty much guaranteed a win.

In this vein, TV-hungry uber-mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explains a cunning probability problem to the wonderful Alan Davies (a man paid to act the dunce on BBC’s QI but who, I suspect, knows almost as much as the Fryster himself…).

The Monty Hall problem is the general name for a puzzle based on a common game-show scenario. I’ll let you watch Marcus and Alan explain all, or you can watch Kevin Spacey and an unnaturally attentive maths class discuss it, from the maths-and-gambling movie ’21′, below.

Of course, Maths-Whizzers know full well the importance of probability. We start to introduce the concept in Key Stage 2 maths and students are evaluating complex probablity scenarios by year 8.

Ms Russell featured Whizz.com as a way to learn maths, and enjoy doing so, online – which is cool because it’s pretty much exactly how we describe Maths-Whizz. As she pointed out, with the five lessons that free account holders get, kids enjoy a solid forty minutes of maths education – and a taste of our comprehensive online tutor – for nothing.

I’ll leave you to watch the report, in full. If you’re impatient to see Whizz on Auntie, then skip to 21:30.

If you’re a Click viewer stopping by, then sign up for a free account!

Followers of the banking and economic crises will now be well-acquainted with the kind of eye-wateringly large sums of money being lost, earned or moved around in the US and European economies. But there is no harm reminding onself what goes into a very large number, and how you might write it down.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7917357.stm

I’ll dispute his gripe that the Americans ruined our nice system of writing a million million as a billion with their (altogether more sensible) method of multiplying by a thousand. It still doesn’t make a billion any easier to grasp for this tiny brain, but at least the American – and scientific – approach gives us more and more exotic terms to describe financial meltdown. Bring on the quadrillion!

Key Stage 3 Maths-Whizzers will be well on the way to Johnny Ball-esque skills with powers. Whether some of our banking experts ought to be sent back to the School For Large Numbers in order (if nothing else) to help them get to grips with just how much money has been sent swirling down the monetary plughole I leave to others to decide.

He is currently making a series called The Story of Maths, starting at 9pm on Monday 6 October on BBC4. In making the series Marcus has travelled around the world, to take viewers through a 30,000 year history of maths. His journey takes him through the ages and around the world, to Egypt, China, India, Russia, The Middle East, Europe and America. He is expected to examine the development of key mathematical ideas and show how, in a multitude of surprising and innovative ways,  these concepts underpin the science, technology, and culture that shaped our world…sounds worth watching!

Try Maths-Twister! In this video, a teacher demonstrates a useful classroom game to help students practise their number facts and mental arithmetic by playing a variation on the classic game ‘Twister’.

Read on for our take on the ‘Maths-Twister’ recipe, or watch the video on the BBC’s new ‘Backpage’ website where – as they put it - ”parents of primary school kids share their top video tips about helping with homework.”

Many of the homework hints give physical ways of learning subjects, which can be handy if you’re desperate to enjoy the sunshine. We recommend our home students use Maths-Whizz for between 60 and 90 minutes a week, which gives lots of time for exploring maths in the real world – give it a try!

(* number pairs that total a given amount)

Recipe:

• One Twister game set (you can make your own with a large cloth and smaller cloth circles
• Playing cards or number flash cards
• Velcro stickers or ribbon

Stick velcro sections to the backs of the playing cards (or number cards), and stick velcro to the Twister spots, ensuring that any card will stick to any spot.

Place the cards on the playing mat, ensuring there are enough number pairs to make the stated total and that the pairs are far enough apart to make this something of a challenge!

Rather than select a random number or colour for every turn, a child is given a random number every other turn. For instance, I give three children the numbers 2, 6, and 7 respectively – they each put a foot on a number. I then ask each child to find the corresponding number that will make ten – 8, 4 and 3, respectively.

Things get messier when the hands come into play! I choose another three random numbers and each child in turn places a hand on their respective numbers. On the next turn, they have to find the corresponding numbers to make ten, just as they did with their feet.