We finished our day at Oxford by visiting the Maths Institute. We were greeted by a maths enthusiast and professor called James. He started the seminar by claiming that 0.9 recurring is equal to 1. We were all sceptical until he did some simple algebra and proved us all wrong.

Moving on to more complicated Geometric Series, we learnt the formula S = a/r-1, replacing the numbers we were all familiar with to some unfamiliar letters. After a few apprehensive glances, we finally understood the formula and moved on to even harder problem-solving A-level questions.

We were then given a famous maths problem called Koch’s Snowflake. Using the knowledge we had about the area of shapes and fractals, James asked us to work out the area of Koch’s triangle.

We left the seminar room overflowing with A-level maths knowledge and ready to do further research on Numberphile. Overall, the lesson was fantastic and a great introduction to A-level maths which many of us are hoping to take.

Written by Yaashri 11 Ash