I was invited to give this year’s WP Milne lecture at Leeds Festival of Science. Professor Milne was a maths teacher at Clifton College, before going on to become the head of Leeds University’s maths department. In honour of this slightly unusual career path, the annual Milne lecture is delivered to an audience of sixth form students (aged 16-18), as well as to the members of the Yorkshire Branch of the Mathematical Association.
I was delighted to be asked, both as a general honour, and in particular because I have also spent a (very) little time teaching in schools, before migrating to the university sector.
I spoke about The Maths that Makes the Modern World, and divided my talk into two halves: on the simplex algorithm for linear programming, and on Google’s Pagerank algorithm, topics also covered in my book.
