On the 10 September Dr Lee Fawcett from Newcastle University shared his in-depth knowledge about the application of statistics to real world geographical issues; in particular Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Through the course of his talk, we realized that the use of relative frequency does not suffice when calculating the probability of extreme climate. Instead we delved deep into the workings of the Gumbel Model and found that it predicted much more reliable probabilities. In fact, this is how structural engineers can determine the height required for infrastructure such as sea walls. It was such an enlightening talk and has really inspired us to explore mathematics beyond our A level curriculum.
Ines and Mona, both VII