• Question: have you enjoyed maths your whole life or, has it only sparked in your recent years?

    Asked by deed520hogs on 5 Jul 2025.
    • Photo: Lucy Rycroft-Smith

      Lucy Rycroft-Smith answered on 5 Jul 2025:

      That’s a great question! I had times when I liked it at school and it made sense, but at other times I felt like it was boring, hard or traumatic. It is only really during University study and then teaching maths myself that I started to really understand how creative and fun it could be.

    • Photo: Kelvin Rose

      Kelvin Rose answered on 5 Jul 2025:

      I got on with maths pretty well at school but what is always hard is to understand why it all matters, right? Why are we talking about times tables, algebra equations and the angles of a triangle?

      Well, I can tell you that most engineers and scientists use maths every day in some way. And it is when you get in to the world of work and realise how important maths actually is – particularly maths up to and including GCSE level maths. That’s what really made it interesting for me.

      In my world of water engineering, I can’t even begin to describe how much maths is used – when you turn on your tap at home, you are benefitting from hundreds of equations and calculations! Nothing too complicated – but still lots of it.

    • Photo: Stephanie Buttigieg

      Stephanie Buttigieg answered on 5 Jul 2025:

      I’ve loved maths ever since I was a little girl. It was always my favourite subject – it felt like a puzzle to me! And the more I advanced through school, the more I fell in love with it because it got more challenging. My favourite thing about maths is how we can use it to understand the world around us by interpreting the equations you write down.

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