Category Archives: Uncategorized

Immigration, Maths, Politics, Uncategorized

Suella Braverman’s numbers on small boats are all wrong

This post is adapted from my Indy Voices article of the same title originally published on 13/03/23

Upon unveiling new plans to deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats, Suella Braverman claimed that 100 million people could already be on their way to seek asylum in the UK.

In her speech to the commons, the home secretary claimed: “There are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let’s be clear. They are coming here.”

An article she wrote the following day repeated the claim and went further suggesting that there were “likely billions more” eager to come to the UK if possible.

In reality, just 85,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats across the Channel since 2018 – just 17,000 a year on average.

Even the relatively high 45,000 people who arrived in the UK last year to seek asylum by crossing the channel on small boats pales into comparison – at just 0.045 per cent of Braverman’s touted 100 million figure. In total, around 90,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2022.

To set the record straight on the numbers, of the 100 million people that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates are displaced around the world, only around a quarter have actually left their home country.

Estimates vary, but around three-quarters of displaced people who do leave their own country remain in a neighbouring country. Surveys consistently demonstrate that the majority of refugees would like to return to their homes as soon as it is safe for them to do so.

Historically, we have relatively fewer asylum seekers applying to the UK, compared to our population size, than many of the EU nations. In 2021, there were around nine asylum applications per 10,000 people in the UK.

Across the rest of the EU, this figure was 14 applications per 10,000 residents, placing the UK below the average in 16th place. In 2022 the UK received 75,000 asylum applications. Germany received almost 250,000.

Despite these facts, the home secretary sees it to her advantage to overinflate the potential scale of the number of people arriving in the UK. She believes that the potential threat posed by this hypothetical deluge justifies legislation which, many believe, is in contravention of international law.

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The huge numbers being bandied about are hard for us to get a handle on. Many people struggle to visualise the difference between thousands, millions and billions. Even if they know that a billion is a thousand times more than a million and a million is a thousand times more than a thousand, when numbers get really large they can go beyond the scale of things we are able to relate to. Everything just seems big.

One way to comprehend the difference is to think about time – a phenomenon which we experience both on very short and very long scales. A hundred thousand seconds is a little over a day. You can go 24 hours without eating no problem.

A million seconds is about 11.5 days. Not eating for that long would push most people to the limits of their willpower. A billion seconds is about 35 years. Fasting for half a lifetime is patently impossible. The scale of the problem changes significantly as the numbers ramp up.

Here’s another way of thinking about it. If I give you £1,000 a day it will take just 100 days for you to amass £100,000. In three years you’ll become a millionaire. To become a billionaire, however, will take 2740 years.

When we compare the 100 million displaced people in the world to the fewer than 100,000 people who claimed asylum in the UK last year, at less than 0.1 per cent the number of asylum seekers doesn’t seem so large.

When we start to place the figures in context, it seems possible that by overplaying the scale of the situation to the public – by bandying around figures of hundreds of millions or even billions – Braverman’s tactic runs the risk of backfiring, making the scale of current asylum applications look eminently manageable.

Even the 45,000 people who came to Britain to claim asylum via boats across the channel represent only around 0.07 per cent of the current population of the UK.

Even when placed in context though, we must be careful not to focus too heavily on the numbers which have grabbed the headlines. We must remember, at its heart, that this story is not about numbers. It is about people. Often desperate people fleeing the traumas of their past and hoping to build a better life for themselves.

By denying them the protections afforded under international law; by breaking the European convention on human rights, the UN convention on refugees and the universal declaration of human rights – all of which the UK was a founding member of – we are betraying the legacy that our country fought so hard to secure.

Education, Maths, Politics, School, Uncategorized

Why are we so proud of being ‘bad at maths’?

This post is adapted from my Indy Voices article of the same title originally published on 17/04/23

In front of an audience of students, teachers, education experts and business leaders, Rishi Sunak set out his plans to “transform our national approach to maths”.

Citing England’s “anti-maths mindset” the prime minister suggested: “We’ve got to start prizing numeracy for what it is – a key skill every bit as essential as reading.”

In an attempt to “not sit back and allow this cultural sense that it’s OK to be bad at maths” and to not “put our children at a disadvantage”, Sunak has commissioned an expert panel made up of mathematicians, education leaders and business representatives to figure out how to “fundamentally change our education system so it gives our young people the knowledge and skills they need”.

Plans to investigate how we can tackle issues around numeracy in England are laudable. The PM’s assertions that higher attainment in mathematics will “help young people in their careers and grow the economy” are not wrong. It is an uncomfortable fact that England consistently scores poorly when compared to other OECD nations for adult numeracy.

Lower numeracy is associated with poorer financial wellbeing for individuals. At the population-level, low-levels of maths skills could be costing the economy billions.

It is also true that there is a much greater stigma attached to illiteracy than there is to innumeracy. You don’t hear people boasting of not being able to read in the same way that people will proudly assert how poor they are at mathematics.

In part, this is because it is much harder to function day-to-day with poor literacy than it is with poor numeracy. But poor numeracy can have hidden and wide-ranging impacts with, for example, one in four people surveyed recently suggesting they had been put off applying for a job because it involved numbers or data.

However, it is not clear that Sunak’s previously announced plan to enforce compulsory mathematics until the age of 18 will tackle these problems effectively. In reality we need a more holistic approach which tackles the stigmas surrounding the study of quantitative subjects throughout primary and secondary education.

By the age of 16, the battle for the prestige of mathematics has already been lost for many of our young people. It is possible that enforcing further mathematical study on these disaffected young adults will make the problem worse, not better.

The blanket policy of compulsory maths for everyone in education up to the age of 18 has the potential to backfire, putting pupils off post-16 education completely.

Instead, we need to work to change attitudes towards numeracy from the very earliest stages of our children’s mathematical education. Hands-on mathematics discovery centres, such as the recently launched MathsCity in Leeds, are one way in which we can hope to build a fun and engaging image of mathematics for our children from an early age.

Illustrating the importance and relevance of maths and the opportunities it can open up as part of the curriculum – something that is currently being attempted by the relatively new “core maths” qualification – might also help to improve attitudes towards mathematics.

Perhaps the biggest threat to the quality of maths education in England today is the long-term shortfall in the number of maths teachers in post. Despite significantly reducing their target for the recruitment of maths teachers, the government again failed to hit even this diminished objective in 2022.

Almost half of all secondary schools are already using non-specialist teachers for maths lessons.

How does the prime minister expect to expand our mathematics education opportunities when we can’t even fill the posts required for our current provision?

Given that the current industrial action being waged by teachers has been triggered by the erosion of teachers’ pay and conditions, and with no resolution to the dispute on the horizon, it is unclear how the government will be able to tackle even the current deficit in teacher numbers let alone recruit enough to deliver an expanded curriculum.

Whilst the idea of improved numeracy for all is an important one – and one which if achieved would significantly benefit both the people of the UK as individuals and the nation as a whole – it is not clear that there is a plan in place to deliver this effectively.

Presumably, Sunak’s expert-led review will be charged with advancing just such a plan. But without the teachers required to cope even with our current educational demands and no satisfactory resolution to strike action on the horizon, it remains to be seen how we will possibly implement any plan to improve numeracy that requires an expansion in our ability to deliver relevant, engaging and inspiring maths lessons.

Uncategorized

Here’s why the new ‘girl math’ trend just doesn’t add up

This post is adapted from my Indy Voices article of the same title originally published on 24/08/23

The new splurge now, justify the cost later craze has taken social media by storm. Good, harmless fun? Not by my calculations, says mathematician Kit Yates

f you want to get a lifestyle craze trending on social media, then you could do worse than stick the word “girl” in its name.

That’s how we got “hot girl walk” – a trend promoting both the mental and physical health benefits of walking – and “lazy girl job” – a phenomenon extolling the virtues of improving your work life balance. There’s also “girl dinner”, which sent the internet into a frenzy over its simple prescription of low-effort snack-based dining, and now the newest addition to the crowd: “girl math”.

Many of the “girl” trends have had their share of criticism, from accusations that lazy girl job promotes low career aspirations to suggestions that girl dinner might encourage unhealthy dietary choices.

But, to me, “girl math” feels a bit more troubling than the previous trends. It originates from a New Zealand radio show in which women ring in to describe and justify expensive purchases they’ve made. The hosts then use some basic maths to help the caller feel better about the money they’ve blown. For example, to justify buying a $1,000 designer bag, “girl mathematicians” might give it a five-year lifetime and calculate its cost per day of just 55 cents. Add in multiple uses for the bag (eg handbag, cabin bag, shopping bag, festival bag) and you might find it’s actually saving you from having to spend more money on other items.

It’s a funny trope, which is why “girl math” videos are getting millions of views on social media – particularly on TikTok. It’s also getting people to do a little bit of real-world maths which (although not super high-level) from my viewpoint as a professional mathematician is always welcome.

Indeed, calculating the daily cost of a purchase over its lifetime is not a terrible suggestion when it comes to budgeting, although it’s a calculation you should really do before making the big-ticket purchase rather than to justify it afterwards.

I have a couple of gripes with the trend, however. My first issue is with the name itself. Mathematicians have fought and indeed continue to fight a battle for representation in our traditionally male-dominated subject. We constantly struggle against tropes that suggest maths isn’t for girls or that “girls don’t like hard maths” – a theory advanced by the government’s former social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh.

So I find the idea that there is maths for girls (the “girl math” trope typically employing fairly straightforward calculations) and by implication maths for boys, hard to stomach. As I have argued previously, it’s important that we continue to reinforce the idea that all of maths is for everyone.

Sometimes the logic underlying girl math TikToKs can leave a little to be desired. For example, under the unwritten rules of “girl math”, returning an item of clothing that costs $50 and then buying another item with a price tag of $100 means that that second item, in fact, only cost $50. Again, I know it’s a joke, but the justification of clearly flawed reasoning by its association with girls, as if this is a trait specific to women, doesn’t do anything to dispel long-held and damaging stereotypes.

Similar to the “women are bad drivers” trope (which is a pernicious myth), this sort of stereotype can seep into the view that the caricatured group hold of themselves. “Dubious math” would be a far more accurate name for the trope, as well as removing its stigmatising impact, but of course, it wouldn’t capitalise on the “girl” trend and perhaps would never have gone viral in the first place.

My other issue with the trend is that, for some people, “girl math” may become more than just a joke.  Some of the more worrying tropes that “girl math” relies on are that “cash isn’t real money” or that purchases under $5 are “pretty much free”.

Indeed, in line with the “cash isn’t real money” trope, there is evidence to suggest that people pay in cash for purchases they find harder to justify to themselves so that there is no electronic paper trail. This makes it easier for the guilt associated with the offending purchase to be forgotten and similar purchases repeated in the future. Reversing a seductive “girl math” calculation for the $5 trope, it’s also worth working out that a $5 purchase every day of the year adds up to $1,825 over the course of a year – a significant portion of most people’s annual budget.

I’m all in favour of spending our hard-earned salaries on the things we enjoy and which make our lives better – we need these perks to lighten our moods in these difficult economic times – but it’s important to remember there is a literal price tag attached to those purchases.

I am advocating for spending our money with agency and intention – budgeting and planning in order to make the treats we buy ourselves viable in the long term, avoiding the post hoc “girl math” justifications that could lead to unsustainable spending habits.