Maths education researcher, Dr Laura Tuohilampi

Hello and welcome to the Wide Open Air Exchange, coming to you from Gadigal Country. I'm Kristen Gallagher, and the Wide Open Air Exchange is a place to meet people with fascinating vocations, interesting ideas and special interests. And today we're talking about mathematics and maths education. My guest is Dr Laura Tuohalumpi, who is a research fellow in the School of Education at UNSW, author of Seriously Fun Maths, founder of Maths for Humans, which is at mathsforhumans.com, and an advocate for popularising mathematics, showing the value of maths to people who might not think of themselves as a maths person, and challenging that idea that there is even such a thing as a maths person or not a maths person. So let's get into it and meet Dr Laura Tuohalumpi. Welcome to the Wide Open Air Exchange and welcome to TuSER. Thanks, Kristen. Thanks for having me. This is so good. I think maybe a logical place to start is, what problem are you addressing? What is the problem and how did you identify it? That's a really good question because open times I feel like what I'm trying to solve isn't seen as a problem. So we normalised people having bad experiences with mathematics, and it shouldn't be that way. So when a person gets to experience their intellectual capacity, their problem-solving skills, their logical thinking, their ability to do critical reasoning and things like that, and they feel so good about it. So then you can see the problem. Why wasn't I introduced to this kind of mathematics before? And then the other thing is what society lacks when we don't have people actually understanding and utilising their mathematics skills. I see. So there's two parts of it. One is with the individual thinking, "I'm not a maths person," but then also the less people there are who are confident with maths or using maths, the less progress maybe we can make in a certain way. Maths related careers are one of the biggest, so growing profession, and they are good salaries, they have lots of flexibility, jobs are permanent, so you've got really good opportunities if you know any maths. So the idea that there are maths people and not maths people, this is something that you would say is a myth or that's like a deeply entrenched, problematic way of thinking. Maybe there's certain continuum, like some people can be like geniuses, imagine, maybe they have certain features, but anybody can do basic, comprehensive school mathematics is not that difficult, and everybody is actually using those skills all that time, but they might have different strategies, they are not necessarily using the exact formula that was taught in school or things like that. And then also myself, I'm usually thought as somebody totally different than somebody that would do mathematics, so leading this lifestyle where you have all the, maybe the, you check all the boxes of what is an aspired lifestyle, travelling a lot and having radio interviews and all kinds of cool things. You're not, okay, let's say it openly, this is what I think you're saying, you're not a typical maths nerd, you might, someone who meets you might think you might be an Instagram influencer. Yes, I did, I did, I did have quite a good fathering in Instagram and I was like actually with that, and just showing people that's a fun side of just using your intellectual skills and trusting your own thinking, and being able to make decisions for your own life as well. And then obviously also having that heavier opportunity, so I feel like I'm doing my hobby for work. Yes. Yeah, that's so good, so you found your vocational calling, but maybe there's some stigma or some stereotypes around what it means to be a maths person that you're keen to break or to, is that sort of a part of it, is that you, because you are, you've known that you're a maths person, that your vocational life is in maths, but the perceptions of what that means, I don't fit with your own experience, so you've been able to identify the problem from your own lived experience of what it means to be a maths person. Yeah, I guess I was like from a really, so like young age, I was able to see maybe like through school mathematics, like I didn't get the best sort of like maths teaching experiences or maths learning experiences in a maths classroom, I didn't have the worst either, but it wasn't that, that sort of like drew me in, but understanding what I can do when I actually understand how system works or systems work or what is like behind certain technologies or the physics or how this world's like, how, how mechanics work, you know, all kinds of things, how things work, and then sort of like generalising that towards society and starting to understand things like, you know, becoming an adult, then like relationships and like social things and like they still adhere to certain like patterns and there is certain data that can use, can be used, all kinds of things and just, you know, seeing the adaptability, what is it like, the adaptability, yeah, the benefits of knowing mathematics and just having that for everything. So I can see that because I can imagine in like behavioural psychology that there'd be certain kind of maths or statistics or probability of how someone's going to react in a particular situation. This is great, I think also this might be a good place to, just to play you a little bit of audio. A previous guest on this programme, Sarah Caddy, who is an astronomer, an astrophysicist, speaking about how she got interested in mathematics. Mathematics was always presented to me as a thing that had a right or a wrong answer that was definitive. You know, it was always presented to me as equations on a page and that just didn't interest me. It wasn't until it was presented to me as a physical problem that was applied to the universe that I started to understand why mathematics is so important. And I think it didn't click for me until the second year of my bachelor's degree when I realised that just like we have to learn programming languages to talk to our computers, we have to learn different languages when we go overseas to talk to different people, we have to learn mathematics to understand the universe because mathematics is the language that our brains use to understand the world around us. And that's when I really understood why mathematics was important and it finally clicked in my head because I realised I was describing the world around me and that's really what was the trigger moment for me. That's Sarah Cady from a previous conversation here on the Wide Open Air Exchange. I'm playing that audio for my guest today, Dr Laura Tuolumpi, who is an academic specialist in maths education. Is what Sarah was saying there resonate? Yeah, that's wonderful. Exactly like mathematics was created to exchange the things and being able to maybe approach and address and investigate certain things. So like it's definitely there to help us to support our decision making and all kinds of like, you know, forecasting things and understanding the universe like she said. I should also declare, I'm one of those people who said I'm not a maths person who struggled with it in school, who saw the formulas on the board like another language that didn't felt that I didn't get it. So now if I could go back and change things I would and it is something I think about what would have got my attention, could have captured my imagination that didn't at the time and I don't mean any disrespect to any teacher I had. So I think I've come to understand maths more as something that is it's logic and reason that's expressed in a very elegant shorthand way. Is that composed as sort of like small as possible? So that's, yeah, that's definitely more how mathematics as a language has been developed. But then also can I just add like based on also like you know, in spite of these experiences and also yours that is so common to have maybe a really narrow view of mathematics. And I know I'm talking about school mathematics in particular. And like she said like only like right or wrong answers and like just having any interest towards any of that like why am I learning this? What am I ever gonna like how am I gonna use this? So I remember when I first moved to Australia and I had a chat with a year and I student here. And she said that all she's ever experienced in a maths class and she was a good like a high high achiever. But she said that her experience was that all that she's ever felt in a maths class is being dumb. And that was like that is just something that comes up over and over again. The focus of like certain close procedures and not really understanding the so like the the joy of utilizing those skills and making like investigations and things like if I do this, then what happens and understanding better those procedures are all about. And that's why we're making some changes in maths classes as well just to sort of like address more maybe like broader outcomes rather than just simply knowing the basics. Okay, this is good. So I think also this may lead into the second bit of audio that I brought and because I think what I'm hearing is like there's this typical classroom experience that people have had and learning the formulas is one part of maths education. That's the kind of I think what I've heard you call theoretical and traditional as as distinct from rich. Yeah, you can call it rich learning or investigations or problem based or active learning although all learning is always active, but there are lots of names for that. Would that be like applied maths richness like showing students how they getting them excited to be curious and having students make their own discoveries so maybe like having them co-constructing their understanding of certain mathematical ideas as well and be more creative also finding good problems to solve so that they can actually use those skills. So I think this I learned by comparison and analogy really helps me and this is another guest from this program. His name is Professor Massimo Picardi who's a professor of natural language processing and machine learning and he had a view on maths education which will play for us. My own personal recipe with math and when I hear people they say I don't understand math is that really math should be taught in concepts but a bit like with learning basic things like learning to play the piano you need also to do some scales. So you need to do both your drills to understand the mechanics but you can't stop at that because if you just do the mechanics first you don't like it is hard. And second also you forget it very quickly for me the key to remember math is to understand it I cannot remember it if I don't understand the concepts and the intuition. So should always go hand in hand what does it mean when you look at an equation don't just look at the numbers and the symbols but what is changing by the effect of what and what does that represent the understanding is key to like it. So what I like about that is the idea music I'm playing music I understand so there's the playing music and maybe experimenting and jamming music having fun with it but then you've also got to learn the scales as the kind of the foundational language or basics or skills. So does that work for you with what we were talking about with math? Absolutely so definitely we can't get around to it it's like there's like he said like learning those basics and procedures and operations it's like a building block that you have to you also have to develop it but as he said like if you only do that then you don't like it like it's not it doesn't make any sense to it's really boring. If you just played scales on the piano or guitar and that was all you did. How would you get engaged? How would you get engaged? And you only did like certain weight lifting or something but at the same time you need to do those exercises. So it's like just combining the two and there's a huge debate when it comes to teaching mathematics that some sort of like swear what is it like for you know only explicitly teaching certain processes and like the building blocks like the you know there's like the skills like the foundation and knowledge and then others as well for this more like investigation based and concepts based as he described it but really we don't have the twos we have to do both of them there's no so like yeah it doesn't make any sense to just focus on like either or. I mean that's like one of the common themes on this program and when we speak about people's vocational interests is this nature nurture question do you think that you do what you do because of your environmental influences and your upbringing or is it your intrinsic qualities that make you suited to what you do it's almost always a bit of both like sometimes you can strongly see one being more influential than the other but it's in a way it sounds like you know it's two parts of the same coin so the the theory and the and the rote learning part of it and the formulas and the foundational knowledge together with the rich learning or the applied mass it seems like they're not even they shouldn't even be treated separately yeah no not at all yeah yes yeah but also like so like referring to that nature versus not sure aspects I feel that it's like where we first started it's like almost like robbing of people's potential because like anybody that are like even like remotely interested in anything sort of like intellectual or cognitively I don't know maybe challenging or something may find a really good companion from mathematics like I myself I was definitely interested in mathematics so there's no denying on that but in my own personal journey what happened was that I really hated probabilities and statistics and I found found them really so like you know difficult as I didn't quite get it but then because of certain coincidences they ended up so I ended up having statistics as my second major in university and I realized through learning it how extremely interesting field of mathematics it is and nowadays I see like like we discussed like all kinds of like relationship things like what happens in politics advertisement like everything is based on probabilities to distributions how people behave like what are you what is the impact on certain things what is the trend so I just feel sorry for people that sort of close the door for mathematics or mathematics in their lives because of its bad reputation and because of those maybe poor classroom mass classroom experiences because they are just so much so many sort of like you know spaces to I don't know explore and like learn from and so little people that are working on those fields so again like there is like so many opportunities when you just know like you don't have to do say university mathematics anything like that but just like be interested in certain parts of it might give you like really really interesting opportunities I mentioned that nature nurture question in terms of you your vocational life and it doesn't have to be about maths it could be about being an academic researcher could be about being a public communicator which you are have you thought about your upbringing and you know are there is there anything in your kind of in your upbringing or your childhood or your environmental influences that sort of set you off on your vocational pathway doesn't have to be related to maths that can be related to you know travel your you come to the other side of the world yes and also are there personal qualities that you think have been some of the things that have propelled you in in your vocational life like they it's the nature nurture question for the vocational part of ourselves is what I'm interested in that's a really interesting question and like going back to my childhood and my upbringing which was like in this small rural village in the middle of Finland like within like one meter of snow every year so I wasn't maybe encouraged to anything what I do today and there wasn't anybody in my family that had ever had any education so they simply just had like nine years of like schooling and that's it and then just like whatever like so you're like first in your family yes yes yes so but what so like it's pretty obvious that I was like personally interested in I would say like intellectual things yeah like just understanding how things work I was really interested in everything like biology physics mathematics just like you're reading and reading also yeah and understanding people yeah curiosity big big part of that but then another aspect of all this is I see this as part of being feminist and my dad used to be really encouraging so he never so like imposed any so like traditional idea I don't know like expectations or ideas on me even though I did so like adhere to some of them like being a mom and those kinds of things but I also feel that in this society that is like so long being run by men solely yeah it is a patriarchy yes I did yeah and we've come come far enough with our general society and they'll have a lot to go so just like that's what I meant by not everybody needs to do like university master's in mathematics or anything like that's but even like say my sister who doesn't have the same qualifications like she really understands the value of understanding things and being able to apply enough mathematics to you know understand like having this numeracy what is it like there is a skill like literacy in numeric literacy there is a term for that and then also like another example was when I was tutoring students that wanted to become psychologists and they really need to understand data and what causes what and what is just something that correlates so it just happens to happen at the same time so to treat any mental issues or anything like that you really need to understand mathematics and how how knowledge is also like gained and how data is collected all kinds of things so does this sort of like yeah I feel that we should like really empower especially women and girls to see the value of knowing how how things are run um thank you so much for that answer now I'm excited to hear about your research because some of the things we've discussed people you know will have these same kind of conversations themselves at your own dinner tables or with other parents or whatever but what you're bringing to this to the table here is your your specialty knowledge in like based on your own research of what does and doesn't work with maths education but also how you engage people with maths and some of it is unconventional or somewhat radical or how would you describe your research and what you do and your approach to this question when I first started teaching mathematics I was pretty radical and I tried all kinds of things and I'm really proud of that because otherwise I wouldn't have learned so it's always good to take risks and learn but then also learn from that and make things better uh so maybe to sort of like lease those things so I have against lots of understanding of how to actually make things interesting to students so it's not just like a magic wand or something and especially uh we have this concept called fun maths so that's something that you can get like millions and like hundreds of millions of resources labeled as fun maths you can google that term and most I would say most uh those resources are not that fun they're fun they're fun they're labeled fun yes maybe designed by people who are yeah many times designs by computers so just having the exact same mathematics tasks but then there's maybe a monster or there's a character or there's like whatever like an animal or something like that you know fancy colors or something like that but the actual activity isn't fun at all so it's the exact same activity we're just um dressing it up yes the dressing is like I call it sugar coating sugar coating so for you what is your have you been exploring what is actually fun yeah so we've just completed a review of what's actually makes learning and knowing mathematics fun for the learners and that's having a good challenge actually learning something making discoveries having those harm moments so students are not after any sort of like superficial fun or anything you can do some very sort of like whatever like entertaining stuff every now and then as well but that's not that's not the key that's just the every creation of paths that you can also maybe provide every now and then so kids don't want like jazz hand no they don't want you to try to entertain them with mathematics it's it's actually got to be because they get enjoyment from solving a problem turns their kinkini of realizing that they're capable yep of solving a problem feeling so good about yourself unlike when there's this click like oh no I see something that I've never seen before it's really exciting it's one of the best feelings in the world and so the big question is how do you do that or what have you found works what is what does make maths engaging yeah so some of the mechanics or mechanisms that teachers can use or any learner uh if they are so like interesting selves but I don't know they're studying um independently is that sometimes you might need those jazz hands that's to get things started yeah so especially me as students that like I'm really really bored or like just so we were sort of like almost like sleeping or something so just look like waking them up somewhat get their attention yes yes so that's this like the first step just get their attention and you can do anything surprising you can do like all kinds of tricks but that's just to get their attention and then there has to be some content something that actually keeps them and like sustains that interest see the whatever the attention gimmick is you've got to move on from that yes you can't just be getting their attention because otherwise you'll lose it yeah it's like a movie that has a really good start but then it doesn't go anywhere yeah yeah and are there specific examples that you've been able to um come up with and test and have found that they are things that are the most engaging um is that too precise a question like is it no it's not a too precise a question they are certain features that we've been able to identify that in tasks and activities yeah that have proven to work so they have some common commonalities yeah and those being like anything that with humorous or like a clear it's it's okay to have things being clearly mathematical and the symbol to start you know those kinds of things are the ones that can you know so like draw your students in and then when there's you know a good challenge uh when students get to make the you know decisions be a little bit creative collaborate and so those are the things that can maintain that interest oh okay but then another thing is well I've been sort of like immersed in myself where it's reasonably is letting students to also pose their own problems and not just any kind of problems what we did and if you may I'd like to actually give these examples so we did a trial with e5 students and we were trying to find something that would be really easy to implement in a classroom so you wouldn't need to know an expert team to tailor main resources for you anything like that but say uh you have decimals in your textbook for the next sort of like lesson um so what can you do as a teacher to make that a little more alive for two students so we did a trial where students literally had those decimals multiplications or multiplying decimals and then instead of just starting with those textbook activities we asked AI what AI things decimals are used in 30 years from today when they are actually adults and like supposed to use those skills so are they just you know learning those whatever like multiplying decimals for nothing or is there something that they will actually use and with the help of AI we were able to have quite interesting so like forecasts and estimating cases and the students were interested in smart homes and how you can actually like make some adjustments to say like inside temperature or your car or things like that using multiplying decimals and then these themselves apply that context to the same textbook tasks making you know things just a little bit more interesting so identifying a real world problem that they are interested in and showing how yeah that that's and not apply and not just any real life problem but something that applies them in their own future in their future i see specific to their generation yeah yeah that's a great example thank you is there anything else that you would want people to know that we haven't quite covered what i was thinking is that's when you say that um you kind of like if you'd go back you would include a little more mathematics yeah and that's something that i realized that so many people have certain regrets that i wish i didn't know more and more they saw that that and that's something that does luckily applied to me because like mathematics wasn't like the most maybe like interesting you know choice or something but that has given me everything and like this whole lifestyle and like living here in australia and just like being really happy with all sort of like life choices so i was just recently asked by somebody that was so like became interested in this idea of maybe including a little more mathematics in their studies like what is it that they should do and i think it's a good question because many of those like pathways are still very very mathematical so obviously you can just do university mathematics and it's usually an easy path in a way that you have to work a lot when you're studying but then after that so you actually you know you can get like go get by very easily um but then i guess anything so like just not avoiding mathematics courses or classes or like specializations and things like that and might be a good way for that yeah that's right i think not being afraid of being worried about failing i think is part of it like you know you mentioned earlier some people were saying that their experience with maths is that maybe it made them feel dumb yeah and if you're a higher chief or in other ways you might want to avoid the things that you aren't you feel arts don't come to you so naturally but that doesn't mean with you're not capable of learning it yeah you might have to have to open up to the idea that maybe you're not going to excel at it yeah maybe it's going to you know yeah sorry we have so many tools like big and working groups and all kinds of things you don't have to become a maths genius yeah i do mistakes all the time but i know when i'm never sure me to think so then i can correct everyone yeah i think that's important too because i go there was a course that i did in later in life um where i had to do a statistics unit yeah it was so intimidating yeah someone who didn't i didn't do maths for my hsc and then i was here i was doing a statistics course okay and i was studying international relations but they wanted us to do statistics which is actually makes total sense yeah we should know we should be able to pass as an introductory statistics course yeah and i found it very hard and actually had to reset the exam because i did like it i wasn't an irrational what for you yeah as as someone who does um well academically i was knew this was not my thing but in the end i was able to do it but but this is where i think maybe some of the traditional comes in in that i spent a whole winter there every day doing problems just sitting at my desk repetition learning it that that rote learning actually did work yeah yes it does it's a really good way of learning it is but yeah it just has to come along with this sort of like motivation and some willingness to do that work so if you i agree with you that's maybe the ultimate way of learning things just like really traditional learning and trilling and rote learning and that comes in combination with understanding but if you feel like you maybe like uh relaxants or skis or only intimidate it in any any sense or anxious they are really good resources out there we got you to wake up instagram we got like all kinds of like even ticktocks and stuff so i think it's also like just like empowering yourself and requesting good mathematics resources not just sort of like being satisfied with something that makes you feel dumb right making math accessible and i suppose having open access sources for learning maths for adults yep yep which is part of what you're yep doing which is so good i just don't want to contradict what you're saying with my examples about the traditional type of learning i think it's really good because every time when i speak about this maybe like a little alternative methods then it's always like so we should only do this and i'm trying to like hear even like i said so many times like those traditional methods work really well yeah but it's yeah so i think it has to be like a bit of both because we're too many people are alienated by the only the traditional method yeah so yeah so we need to be more inclusive yeah combining the two approaches and not even like what studies show is that those traditional methods should be should be the dominating methods but they can't be the only methods and and that also those methods are the ones that we know pretty well so there isn't that much need to so like we educate people to teach mathematics in those ways which is why your work is novel yep it's in and needed yeah we don't actually need people on the forefront of teaching of researching how to teach traditional math yeah because we know how to do that yeah we do need people like yourself who are researching how to engage people who aren't already engaged in maths how to get their attention and keep it how to show them how to build their confidence and curiosity exactly and how to incorporate that with those traditional methods not just like abandoning them they're all together so one of the things that my one of my sisters and I always speak about is we whilst we regret that we weren't engaged with maths we also think that we might have there might have been a bit of we might have been part of a bit of an experiment when we were in primary school of a new way of teaching maths that was non-traditional and this was in the late 80s early 90s and they brought in a system in our primary school I think they called it base 10 and it was mostly just game type paddle pop sticks and interactive maths but without the we didn't learn long division in the traditional way we just learnt it with shapes and by the time we got into high school we felt really behind so we had always thought that oh I didn't you know we wish we had got the the foundations because it actually we felt it made it harder for us to keep up with our classmates who had the traditional foundational learning that we were behind even though it was an interesting idea to engage sort of interactively with items like objects we didn't we just didn't have the basics to and so then we fell behind yes and there are lots of studies showing exactly that so when we are doing like two radical changes and especially most primary teachers don't have mathematics so like nationalizations or anything like that so like putting those two things together the outcome isn't necessarily the best possible so like maybe with really really expert teachers that could work but then what research also shows is that you don't like what we know the traditional way of teaching mathematics actually works pretty well so all that is needed is just like tiny changes like a little bit of like this joy and creativity added here and there and also flexibility so that there's room for students questions for instance I was just asked by my teacher students like but how do you incorporate students questions just having time whenever they have anything that they want to discuss you have time for that and that's how you establish these so like two-way interaction and and showing your students that you are not just telling that that you would you know appreciate their input but you actually like doing that in practice right and then then you just have that like maybe like 15 minutes of you know a dialogue yeah yeah but also the flexibility in your lesson planning that whenever that comes you just allocate that's whatever like 15 minutes there and then you continue with your right so room room yeah room to you know to be flexible you know explicitly showing that your students questions are important they're really interesting and then we practice to see if you learn how to like make connections to syllabus content as well right and another thing I've heard that is happening now in classrooms and I don't know the name for it is um a method of having the students sort of stand up and speak through a problem a maths problem so they're not working it out on with on the blackboard or with numbers or they're using their words and saying what how they would solve a problem and that sounds really interesting to me as someone who was always a words person when you write an essay or you're giving your reasons you're using some logic in the way that you make an argument and maybe someone who thinks of themselves as being a word person could possibly access maths by tapping into those skills of I'm just I'm going to say it and speak it and work through what I think the answer is because maybe you would actually be describing a mathematical concept without realising that it's also can be represented by numbers yes yes and having those narratives and like literally like actual real life references as well we have this new course that has started in unisw where instead of like learning explicit maths content the students are finding real life scenarios and identifying what sort of mathematics is used and it doesn't have to be too rigidly mathematical and there was this wonder that there's been like really really wonderful um so like contributions from students but like one of them being finding uncertainty and variation in uh aboriginal uh fishing traditions yeah so just like I investigating like things that actually happen in real life that have like might have like lots of relevance and and then so like starting from there and then adding the mathematics onto that scenario instead of doing the other way other way around like starting from a textbook exercise and then trying to like desperately find so I can I apply this yeah okay yeah so starting with the problem a question that's interesting a reason which is what researchers do start with a question and then think how could I answer this isn't it so so it's reversing yeah the way that we think about maths as the sort of is the part of the answer not the starting point yeah yeah because and that's how mathematics was and everything that humans create and sort of like develop starts from the actual problem and like what we learn maths and maths classes is the end products yeah like years and maybe like sometimes like centuries of human like input and contributions and investigations and then we have this formula and then we're expecting students to just like understand the whole meaning of that formula yeah within like 45 minutes or something and not even understanding where the needs you know so like came from originally yeah so is there also part of this where maybe part of the answer is in teaching like with the philosophy of science some sort of philosophy history part of maths where you learn about the mathematics you know you learn about Pythagoras and who he was and what when he lived and what kind of problem was he was yeah trying to solve like farming or I don't know what both the other book had the library back then but like trying to measure things like the other fields and like yeah and then encountering this problem that we can't like calculate some of the diagonals and that's where things started you're listening to the wide open air exchange and my guest is Dr Laura to a lumpy Laura is an an academic specialist in mathematics education author of seriously fun maths and founder of maths for humans dot com and also a forthcoming book that it's exploring the idea of popularizing mathematics and Laura has kindly shared a draft chapter with me to read ahead of our conversation today one of the the concepts in that chapter that was pretty unique I think to you and that old that I haven't come across before is this idea of selling maths and thinking and we do live in a very kind of consumerist world and also in a social media world and we kind of know what gets people's attention in social media spaces and is part of this thinking that if we think about what gets people interested in other in that kind of social media space or as consumers if we think about maths as being like a product how would you sell it to them is that the sort of basis of your thinking in the in that in the book and in in the chapter oh yeah so the book is about popularizing maths popular and it's bringing together like the leading experts of this whole planet that have been working to make things more accessible and interesting not only in maths classes but say in youtube on youtube or any sort of like other medium as well but the whole sort of like point in that chapter is that mathematics can be one of the best buys the best buy yes so um these you know new generations and generation um alphai is the in the us one uh so what are their expectations are things like being able to make an impact sustainability is a massive issue uh having like some so like sustainability in their careers as well so not just being like thrown away around you know like one whatever like contracts to another and then also like salivary you do want to have like uh you know a good income income generation whether you like we like it or not is a big part of what we need to survive in a capitalist world yes yeah and i'm sorry i realized i didn't mean to sound uh set that up in a superficial way because everything you've just described the value is needs much deeper than than the way i might have implied these but maybe the superficial way is exactly what draws people in so like like waking them up like actually what you may be able to achieve just by including a little bit of mathematics in your like studies and your career could be things like traveling and good income lots of influence so like they might seem superficial but they're also some of the like the values that new generations have and there's nothing wrong with that and then with that comes things like you know feeling that you're making what is it like a year like a more so like sustainable impacts on this planet and like having a good contribution so those are the ones that then keep you going as well i see so it's it's selling the idea that maths is not just for a particular kind of mathematician or mathematician who will have a really specific technical role and there's a limited number of those kinds of roles and we just need people to be mathematicians it's realizing that studying maths learning maths is going to be a value add in your life even if you don't pursue maths as an actual professional vocation yeah anything environmental like working bits animals like all kinds of things that actually women are quite interested in if you add a little bit of mathematics you don't have to be that sort of like uh what would be the word for that like an assistant for somebody like i don't know like a seo that is just telling you what to do but you can be that seo and making like more sustainable and more valuable decisions yeah so i yeah i hear what you're saying and also it makes you more well rounded in the skills that you have and what you can bring into your vocational life um even if you're not a specialist because uh it's interesting that i was a heavily humanities person in school or history in english and and not science and maths and now i've um in my academic studies much later in life i've come into the social sciences and there's a it's a science we use a scientific method most of my work is quite qualitative because that's where my strengths are but like i have to use maths to an extent but it's limited and i also have to be honest about my limitations but i now can see i there's so much more that i could do to answer the questions that i'm answering if i had my skills were better if i could do more of the quantitative side of if i had a better grasp on doing regression analyses or i can still do good work but i could be doing better work or i'll just have access to more tools and more research tools to answering questions in a different way if if i had you know a better foundation in maths i can see why it's important to sell it early yes get people interested and engage and give these alternative narratives because even today uh sometimes what happens is that when we're looking for you know so like uh say women role models to you know younger generations or something they still sort of like perpetuate this same never see the same visuals let's say that way as like when i've sometimes done like really so like a radical uh say in instagram posts or things like that like you know combining you know me going to the gym weights you know some mathematics or things like that sometimes that's been seen us too much like as a mathematics person you shouldn't um what i'm saying is that there's this really interesting tensions between and we we talked about low culture mathematics before the interview as well so sort of like there's this there's a little mentality that says we we are happy to have more students learning mathematics as long as they do that in the very traditional way and don't change how it's sort of like perceived and once you try to like own it a little differently and have those other maybe like superficial values incorporated with that that's a little sort of like yeah so there's sort of kind of a there can be a litre still purist yeah thing with maths that we don't want it to be dumbed down for the masses and if you're going to do it you should be engaging with it in the traditional yeah theoretical way but then yes there are other things where um there's popular versions of them that you don't have to know all of the technicalities in order to engage or and you i think you have an example with yoga yeah i always compare things to yoga because i'm an avid yoga practitioner i do that every morning and i love it and i also like i've learned so much about this like the deeper aspects of yoga and that internal practices and all that but you still enjoy the like the extrinsic aspects as well so it's nice to also feel that you can do certain poses and maybe even like show that sometimes and just like enjoy what your body is capable of doing so the same way yoga was sort of like expanded to masses and everybody can do a little bit of yoga without understanding like the full sort of like richness of that we could have that same happening to mathematics and like this sort of like smart thinking in in general and i think it requires allowing those like different visuals as well so like not saying no to girly girls doing mathematics or mathematicians being girly girls for instance but like just like allowing all people no matter how they what are their superficial values or whether they have like none so ever still so like own mathematics i see it is not it doesn't have to be all or nothing there can be a kind of popularized version of maths the way that there is with yoga where lots of people practice it even in a in a less deep way but that it's more widespread and valued and you can always learn more and you can go like deeper and yeah yeah and for myself i sometimes feel like i need to choose either being the mathematician the reputable like credible like um i don't know like how to say that like a more traditional and and very like a blazer and all that and like my true self is like this yoga girl on the beach and then like but you can't do math and you can't be like a match representate like representative if you're doing that at the same time so it's like it's yeah we need more of you because so that we can break that stereotype yes but it's a hard stereotype to break because you you know it's that it's a bit of a cliche saying but you can't be what you can't see yeah so maybe we do need more people who don't look or represent in the same way as the traditional mathematician wins the tweed jacket and and practice on the elbows nothing wrong with it but there's other ways that you can look and be and very interesting you can have and still be deeply um in love with maths yeah because if you do have those other maybe like extrinsic or like visual values and then you just can't so like relates with them so like the visuals of mathematics or mathematicians then like i think that's so like a difficult gap to break right this is so good we've got a wrap because of the time but can i say also i'm really impressed by your own personal trajectory because i i'm also first in family my sisters and i we'd my parents left school when they were 14 15 and we didn't know anybody who went to university and i i don't know your exact story but i know that that is not an easy path it's not and so i respect you for you know whatever that that journey has been for you i imagine you it has its challenges when you are navigating it without that kind of guide ideas like you said like just take risks and accept that you're going to fail i think it's a really good guideline for everything in life yeah like moving to australia speaking on your second language all the time and not being able to quite communicate what you want and just feeling that sort of like it develops humbleness so i think it's a good thing to challenge yourself and put yourself in situations where you're not excelling in everything and then you're so like your bar so like raises all the time so you do get like more expertise every single day but you still remain humble because you're still making mistakes every single time gosh i so agree with you i when i've reflected on my personal growth it's come from being humbled yeah yeah and all in different ways yeah but that's where the the the growth is that's where and in on reflection it's also the most interesting part it is and it's also one of the core lessons of yoga that you have to accept your limits like you're not going to excel like it's the you know this is like the ultimate goal is so far that you will probably never get there so just like keep practicing and accept that you know you're still on the right back oh that's so good because like i know lots of people including myself have had issues with struggling with perfection it's interesting because when you're someone who does have perfectionist tendencies you actually are always accepting that you're not perfect because you're never reaching it so it's not like you actually you might strive for it but you don't ever get there so in some ways you're even more practiced at not never achieving it because you it's that constant kind of um anyway we're getting very philosophical here but maybe i need to take up yoga yeah Laura thank you so so thanks thank you so much i'm you're so impressive and i admire what you're doing and i'll through wide open air exchange show page i'll um embed your usw 10 minute introduction but also links to mathsforhumans.com and is seriously fun maths is that your forthcoming book or is that that's been released that was published two years ago so that's maybe my number one recommendation yeah and there will be some new books in the future that obviously will be even better yeah but in seriously fun maths they are like just so many examples and really really concrete things and it's also a really easy read so you can just like great and do you have a working title for the forthcoming book uh there's this popularization of mathematics might be a working title so it might might change and then there's another sort of like projects that hasn't um been in two forms just yet so that's more about like discussing um utilizing mathematics for your real life problems so so like stepping a little away from mathematics teaching and learning and like applying mathematics in math navigating life is great so like self-help maths for self yeah that's something that is missing maths in dating maths in character because i used mathematics for everything really great thank you so so much this is fantastic so good to meet you and it's been really good yeah thank you thanks again to dr laura to our lumpy for being a really wonderful guest here on the wide open air exchange yeah well my favorite kind of conversation to have i'll leave it there a big thanks to vape dads for use of this track whiskey priest for the wide open air exchange theme music and i appreciate you for listening so thank you very much thanks again laura bye everyone so so so