The Maths of Life and Death - The Wroughton Lecture with Dr Kit Yates

The School was delighted to welcome the award-winning academic and popular science writer, Dr Kit Yates to KES on 6 November to give the eighteenth annual Wroughton Lecture. The lecture series is sponsored by former Headmaster, Dr John Wroughton, with all ticket sales supporting the School’s Bursary Fund.

Dr Yates is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath. He is a former winner of the University of Bath Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement and recipient of the Faculty of Science Teaching Award. A mathematical biologist, his research involves taking real-world phenomena and uncovering the mathematical truths that lie behind them. He works in applications as diverse as embryonic disease, the patterns on eggshells and the devastating swarming of locust plagues – teasing out the mathematical connections in the process.

Alongside his academic position, he is also a burgeoning author and science communicator. He has written about the enjoyment and ubiquity of maths for The Guardian, The Times, the i, as well as having over 1.1 million reads on The Conversation. He has appeared on the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory and Watchdog, and regularly sets the BBC Radio 4 Programmes’ Puzzle for Today.

His first book, The Maths of Life and Death, was published to critical acclaim this September and his fascinating lecture explored key themes from the book to give the captivated audience of pupils, parents, staff, governors and friends of the School an eye-opening explanation of how maths underpins almost everything we do, from working to communicating to relaxing, and how it is often a matter of life and death!

“Every time you look at the world you are building a model. With every new experience these representatives of your environment are refined and reconfigured. Each piece of sensory information you perceive makes the model of reality in your head more detailed and complex. The building of mathematical models, designed to capture our complex reality, is the best way we have of making sense of the rules that govern the world around us. The key to exemplifying these rules is to demonstrate their effects on people’s lives: from the extraordinary to the everyday.”
Dr Yates presented true stories of life-changing events in which the use (or abuse) of maths have played a crucial role. Drawing on a wide range of examples from the media, medicine and crime, the audience were invited to examine pertinent societal issues such as medical screening and evaluate the treatment of health stories and crime statistics by journalists and politicians.

Using illustrations and audience participation, Dr Yates demonstrated the importance of seeking an explanation of the maths behind the figures, to appreciate absolute and relative risks, ratio biases, mismatched framing and sampling bias. He clearly showed how a little mathematical knowledge in our increasingly quantitative society can provide us with the vital tools to question the perceived authority of individuals and organisations who quote statistics and predict outcomes. Most importantly, this thought-provoking lecture conveyed the crucial role that mathematical knowledge plays in helping us to discern the truth in the information we receive so that we are equipped to make the best choices and avoid the worst mistakes in ‘real world’ situations.