Archive | December 6, 2013

Amazing Maths!

Today the OC received a visit from our class mathematician Dr Jarad Martin.

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Dr Jarad taught our students about solving Fermi problems, named after physicist Enrico Fermi. Fermi problems are all about estimation and  involve making justified guesses about quantities that seem impossible to compute given limited information.

Dr Jarad also told students about the Drake Equation which is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Click on the link to watch a fun animation about how the Drake Equation works.

Drake Equation