Our thanks to James Allen, from the University of Portsmouth, who came in to College today to talk to Maths students about ‘Modelling a Pandemic.

’Head of Maths, Simon King said, “Over the past few years we’ve seen and heard a lot about ‘case number predictions’, ‘flattening the curve’, ‘keeping the R value below 1’…. but what do these things mean and how are the predictions made? The answer is mathematical models. Today’s talk gave students the chance to see how important mathematicians are to everyday life and how broad their research can be.”