What's the Point of Algebra?

It's time again to work out why they bothered teaching us maths, can it be useful in our everyday lives? In this episode, Hugo, Day and Emily are returning to their roots... with a look at special indices. What does it mean for something to be to the power of a minus number? Is that useful for anything? Time to find out! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, we'd always love to hear from you at [email protected], or on Twitter

We're back! Hugo had the audacity to get married, so it took far too long to put this episode together. But we are back! In this episode Hugo, Emily and Day continue their mission to apply GCSE maths to our everyday adult lives, by examining powers... indices... those little numbers floating above other numbers. This time, Emily surprises herself with her GCSE maths memory, Day is expressing herself with maths, and Hugo may finally be stumped. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, we'd always love to hear from you at [email protected], or on Twitter

Episode 3 of What's the Point of Algebra? deals with a topic that not even our hosts can say correctly. Hugo, Emily and Day continue their delve into GCSE maths, by looking at how useful lowest common multiples and highest common factors are. In this episode, Day has their knowledge of film and musical theatre put to the test. Emily realises that ridiculous names are a common factor for her family. And Hugo, as always, makes the mistake of thinking your typical person on the street has the same problems as an astrophysicist.

If we've kept track of everything correctly, we estimate this is our second episode... This week, Hugo, Emily and Day continue their delve into GCSE maths, and how it can be used in our everyday lives, by looking at estimation. In this episode, Hugo estimates how many snail eggs one has to break, to make an omelette. Emily estimates the cost of her weekly shop with terrifying precision. And Day estimates the winner of a race between a tortoise and a Mustang.

In their first episode, Hugo, Emily and Day look at combinatorics... which is a totally not made up way of saying how many different ways someone can make a choice. Plus, Emily learns what an exclamation point is, Day challenges us to share out frills amongst the cast of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Hugo gets waaay too excited about an eighty-year-old murder mystery.