A large part of my working life involved learning, teaching and using mathematics. For some of the time I was a teacher, for some of it an academic leader, and for some I ran a consultancy. For the last ten years of that life I was an academic mathematician and I guess I could have carried on with that role for many more years, but I decided to retire and pursue other interests. Nevertheless, I do find myself drawn back into my enthusiasm for mathematics. Over the years I involved myself in a range of activities, some paid, some voluntary, aimed at encouraging interest in mathematics. There have been so many projects with that intention, but they have not been very successful. It is still OK to say things like “I can’t do maths to save my life” and to treat it as a badge of honour. Politicians who have tried to tackle the issue have found it impossible to achieve much more than unhelpful criticism in the media.

One of the outcomes of all this effort over the last fifty years or so has been a significant improvement in the teaching of mathematics, especially for the 16-19 age group. However, I found that at university level the teaching continued to be much the same as it was when I was an undergraduate (1971-74)! This is fine for young people who are good at the subject and enthusiastic about it, but there are many undergraduates studying mathematics who find it challenging and struggle to keep up. I decided to start this blog in the hope that some of these undergraduates my find it and be encouraged to explore some of the more interesting animal enclosures in the mathematical zoo.

If you want to know why mathematics is a zoo, see my first post “mathematics is a zoo“.