{"id":34,"date":"2020-06-22T16:06:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academics\/?p=34"},"modified":"2021-03-29T15:50:34","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T14:50:34","slug":"so-when-is-a-maths-question-not-really-a-maths-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/2020\/06\/22\/so-when-is-a-maths-question-not-really-a-maths-question\/","title":{"rendered":"So, when is a Maths question not really a Maths question\u2026.?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6><em>This picture was taken last year during the 2019 Practice Track Kick-Off<\/em><\/h6>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Author: Prof Peter Mott -<\/h3>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>What is the answer to 54 divided by (11 plus 4 plus 9)?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"hardreadability\">This was a question I posed yesterday to the students embarking on their Practice Track Projects<\/span>. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\">These projects are part of their studies towards an MSc Engineering Business Management (EBM) or MSc Innovation and Technology Management (ITM) at the University of Bath<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\"><span class=\"veryhardreadability\">I had started the Project Kick-Off event \u2013 with students, company sponsors, and project supervisors all assembled via our video meeting (the ubiquitous MS Teams which many of us find ourselves talking to these days<\/span>!)<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\">The most diligent students <span class=\"adverb\">quickly<\/span> responded in the chat with the answer 2.25. Others soon caught on and the chat room filled up with the same answer. The odd 2.5 appeared (mental arithmetic error or wrongly typed in the calculator app on their smartphones I wondered?). But no correct answer appeared. Although <span class=\"adverb\">mathematically<\/span> accurate, this was not the answer that I was looking for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\"><span class=\"veryhardreadability\">In a not-so-veiled attempt to get the message across that their upcoming projects required them to think <\/span><span class=\"adverb\">creatively<\/span><span class=\"veryhardreadability\"> and beyond the obvious, I suggested that they think <\/span><span class=\"adverb\">carefully<\/span><span class=\"veryhardreadability\"> about the problem statement and the context in which it was set<\/span>. You see, this was not a Maths problem (and I am not a Maths Professor), which had a definitive right or wrong. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\">Instead, it was an Engineering Management question where the answer was open to interpretation and innovation<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\"><span class=\"hardreadability\">So, in this case \u2013 the 54 represented the number of students on the call, formed into 11 teams, that were embarking on their <\/span><span class=\"adverb\">newly<\/span><span class=\"hardreadability\"> assigned projects<\/span>. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\"> They are a <\/span><span class=\"adverb\">fantastically<\/span><span class=\"veryhardreadability\"> diverse group of students from 16 countries with backgrounds ranging from engineering to management disciplines, and from accounting to social sciences<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"MSc Engineering Business Management and MSc Innovation and Technology Management\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/370844933?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\"><span class=\"hardreadability\">The 11 thus represented the number of Practice Track projects that they would be working on over the summer<\/span>. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\">Our sponsoring companies who are providing these projects had come forward with many real-world engineering or technology management challenges and opportunities that they wanted help with<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\">A remarkable set of companies that we are proud to work with at the university. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\">From household names such as Rolls Royce Aerospace, Tata Steel, and the McLaren F1 Team\u2019s Manufacturing department\u2026 through to some lesser-known companies that are leaders in their field \u2013 like Quick Release (an automotive services provider working with all the big OEMs) and HID Global (who provides the enabling technology that helps us all to access buildings with ID cards or devices)<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\"><span class=\"veryhardreadability\">We also had some younger companies such as Somnus Scientific - a start-up looking to commercialise an innovative new biosensor that could revolutionise the delivery of anaesthesia during an operation<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr\">The remaining terms in the equation, the 4 and the 9, represented the project supervisors. <span class=\"veryhardreadability\">Four are the experts coming from previous senior management roles in industry, who are acting as the bridge between the academic and business worlds<\/span>. <span class=\"hardreadability\">Nine are the academics from the university bringing their expertise from the world of Engineering or Management<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>So, when is a maths question NOT a Maths question? When :<\/p>\n<p><em>54 students \/ (11 projects +4 industrial supervisors +9 academic supervisors)\u00a0 \u00a0=\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <strong>The Engineering\u00a0\u00a0Management Practice Track*<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>*OK, fair enough\u2026 half marks awarded for coming up with 2.25!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Practice Track Projects are unique to MSc Engineering Business Management and MSc Innovation and Technology Management. Over the 3 months of the summer semester, students get the chance to work with a real company on a real problem. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":967,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[37,39,40,38,41,42],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mech-eng","category-teaching","tag-ebm","tag-engineering-business-management","tag-innovation-and-technology-management","tag-itm","tag-msc","tag-postgraduate"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/174\/2020\/06\/C0010_CARD04_UoB_Eng_Des_EBM_ITM_081_SDXC01_TP_120619.00_01_07_01.Still007.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4PBP-y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/967"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/fed-academia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}