Programme

Schedule of talks

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning we have a schedule of five-minute talks. Past talks have included everything from people sharing a mathematical phone game they enjoy, to the ways they made their wedding more mathematical, as well as puzzles, weird mathematical concepts and observations of real-world things containing interesting maths.

All talk sessions are livestreamed to remote attendees, and the breaks between sessions include opportunities for both in-person and remote attendees to talk to the speakers from the previous session.

Some examples of previous talks can be found on YouTube:

• Ben's talk from 2023 about interesting street names
• Luna's talk from 2023 about the history of Fizz Buzz
• Christian's talk from 2022 about five fun things with trains (including a puzzle)
• Luna's talk from 2019 about Cursed Regular Expressions
• Miles's talk from 2017 about climbing mountains in Kyrgyzstan
• Matt's talk from 2016 about Letterwise Magic Squares

The programme of talk sessions will be posted here once it's available.

Giving a talk

You can give a talk to show us something you think is interesting. We're not looking for Earth-shattering maths, nor new discoveries, nor anything exceptionally deep or meaningful. We're looking for things that you think are neat, cool, weird, surprising, or that simply intrigue you.

Full information on how to submit a talk will be given when you buy your ticket, but the following might be useful to know:

• Talk submissions are welcome from both in-person and remote attendees.
• Talks are strictly limited to five minutes.
• Think of your five minutes as an invitation for people to come and chat with you.
• A laptop will be made available for presenting, and we will have the capacity to show Powerpoint, Keynote, PDF and online slides, as well as display websites in a browser.
• If you're using slides, you will need to send them in advance.
• There will also be a visualiser for speakers to use.

Saturday Night Tables

On Saturday evening a section of the room will be set up with tables, each containing an activity. Activities can range from 'Let's play game X' through to 'I will teach you how to Y', and previous years have included learning how to play Go, playing games of Set, making things with origami, learning to spin/knit/crochet, and more.

Tables are run by MathsJam attendees. Full information on how to submit a table proposal will be given when you buy your ticket, but the following might be useful to know:

• you must be prepared to stay at your table for the whole of a pre-specified hour of the evening (starting after dinner)
• activities may continue after the end of the hour, but there's no obligation to continue after this time
• you'll need to bring any necessary instructions, equipment and materials for attendees to learn a new thing, make something or do something fun
• you'll get a one-minute talk slot during the day in a special lightning session to explain/advertise your activity.

We will add details of the Saturday Night tables to the website, and include (where possible) ways for remote attendees to recreate the activities themselves at home.