Leicester Maths Problem-solving, events and curiosities

Leicester Maths

Problem-solving, events and curiosities

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When the Clock Tower Replaces Mayfair: A Probability Audit of a Leicester Board
Problem Solving

When the Clock Tower Replaces Mayfair: A Probability Audit of a Leicester Board

Imagine a Leicester edition of Monopoly where the Clock Tower and King Power Stadium take the place of Mayfair and Old Kent Road. We map city landmarks onto board squares, then use dice probabilities and expected-rent calculations to reveal which Leicester properties are genuine traps and which are overpriced. It’s a playful, hands-on way to explore expected value, game design and local geography.
The Nearest-First Map: Sketching Leicester’s Wards as Voronoi Cells
Problem Solving

The Nearest-First Map: Sketching Leicester’s Wards as Voronoi Cells

Take a handful of Leicester landmarks, draw the lines where the nearest one changes, and you have a Voronoi diagram. It is a brilliant way to think about ward boundaries — and about what real maps quietly leave out.
The Target That Moves: A Rainy-Day Cricket Puzzle from Grace Road
Problem Solving

The Target That Moves: A Rainy-Day Cricket Puzzle from Grace Road

A drizzly afternoon at Grace Road is the perfect excuse to unpack Duckworth-Lewis-Stern. Here’s how resources, par scores and revised targets work — plus a classroom activity where students build their own table and argue about the number that matters.
The Seat That Sees: A Sightline Audit at Leicester's Curve
Problem Solving

The Seat That Sees: A Sightline Audit at Leicester's Curve

A night out at Leicester's Curve is also a lesson in angles, arcs and clever seating design. Here is a classroom-friendly way to audit a sightline, estimate capacity with polygons, and notice the maths built into the auditorium.
One Pie, Thirty Plates: Scaling a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie for a Leicester Maths Club
Problem Solving

One Pie, Thirty Plates: Scaling a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie for a Leicester Maths Club

A maths club session should not just talk about ratio — it should smell of hot water crust. Here is how to turn a Melton Mowbray pork pie into a hands-on lesson on volume, tin sizes, pastry ratios, oven energy and cost per slice, with Leicester students doing the sums before the first cut.
The Birds You Didn’t Count: A Winter Estimating Game at Watermead
Family Activities

The Birds You Didn’t Count: A Winter Estimating Game at Watermead

A winter walk at Watermead Country Park is a lesson in sampling. Here’s how to use the Lincoln–Petersen method with a bag of dried beans, then take the idea outdoors without disturbing a single coot.
A Pocketful of Doors: Leicester's 2026 Advent Maths Countdown
Family Activities

A Pocketful of Doors: Leicester's 2026 Advent Maths Countdown

A pocket-sized advent calendar of 24 short Leicester maths puzzles for December 2026 — one for each day, each tied to a city landmark, local number or winter ritual. Use it as a lesson starter, a tea-time challenge or a no-pressure home routine.
The Park Is a Protractor: Estimating Heights on a Leicester Afternoon
Family Activities

The Park Is a Protractor: Estimating Heights on a Leicester Afternoon

Victoria Park's flat ground and long sightlines make it a natural outdoor classroom for height estimates. Here is a family-friendly field kit using shadows, pacing and a homemade clinometer, with worked examples and a sheet to copy.
The Towpath Calculator: A Grand Union Canal Maths Ramble for Leicester Families
Family Activities

The Towpath Calculator: A Grand Union Canal Maths Ramble for Leicester Families

Turn a walk along the Grand Union Canal into a hands-on maths lesson, with locks as volume puzzles, towpath gradients as ratio practice, and bridge numbers as a ready-made scale challenge. It is a self-contained field guide for Leicester families and teachers who fancy a different kind of number trail.
Salt, Junctions and the Long Way Round: Graphing Leicester's Winter Gritting
Problem Solving

Salt, Junctions and the Long Way Round: Graphing Leicester's Winter Gritting

When the forecast turns grey, Leicester's gritters face a route-planning puzzle that starts with nodes and edges. Here's how a simplified city map becomes a graph, why odd junctions cause extra miles, and how to design a salt-truck route that covers every priority street.
Four Pens, One City: Colouring Leicester's Ring Road Without a Clash
Problem Solving

Four Pens, One City: Colouring Leicester's Ring Road Without a Clash

Can you shade a map of Leicester using only four colours, with no two bordering districts sharing one? Take the ring road, the Soar and five surrounding neighbourhoods, turn them into a network, and find out why three pens will never quite be enough.
Swapping in the Tower: A Leicester Bell-Ringing Workout for Permutation Hunters
Problem Solving

Swapping in the Tower: A Leicester Bell-Ringing Workout for Permutation Hunters

Change-ringing looks like music, but underneath it is a live machine for generating permutations. Use Leicester Cathedral's bell tradition to explore ordered swaps, cycles and a four-bell puzzle you can try with cards or classmates.
The Skeleton in Grid Square C4: A Greyfriars Coordinate Challenge
Problem Solving

The Skeleton in Grid Square C4: A Greyfriars Coordinate Challenge

Leicester’s most famous car park once hid a royal grave — and a very tidy coordinate problem. Plot a dig grid, scale a trench, triangulate the find spot and work out where Richard III’s skeleton lay before the archaeologists did.
Silence, Symmetry and a City's Thanks: A Maths Assembly for 11 November
Problem Solving

Silence, Symmetry and a City's Thanks: A Maths Assembly for 11 November

A respectful, Leicester-ready assembly plan for 11 November 2026 that uses a two-minute timeline, the symmetry of a paper poppy and a small local tally to help pupils think mathematically about Remembrance. The numbers are there to serve the silence, not replace it.
Crumbs, Costs and Queues: A Festive Maths Field Notebook for Leicester Families
Family Activities

Crumbs, Costs and Queues: A Festive Maths Field Notebook for Leicester Families

A mince pie is never just a mince pie when there is a price label to unpack. This festive field guide turns Leicester’s Christmas market stalls into gentle family maths: unit pricing, queue estimates, ratio reasoning and the real cost of a Christmas feast.
Tessellating by the Baths: A Roman Pattern Hunt at the Jewry Wall
Problem Solving

Tessellating by the Baths: A Roman Pattern Hunt at the Jewry Wall

Leicester's Roman baths give you a wall, a handful of mosaics and a surprisingly good excuse to argue about angles. Here's a pattern-hunting walk with four classroom-ready problems on tessellation, symmetry and repeating borders that never quite finish.
Run, Record, Reduce: A Leicester 5K Result Sheet as a Living Data Set
Problem Solving

Run, Record, Reduce: A Leicester 5K Result Sheet as a Living Data Set

A Saturday morning 5K produces far more numbers than most runners notice: splits, positions, ages and percentages. Here is how to turn a Leicester parkrun result sheet into a genuinely useful problem-solving session.
Shelves, Spines and Place Value: A Number Trail for Leicester Families
Family Activities

Shelves, Spines and Place Value: A Number Trail for Leicester Families

Leicester Central Library is full of numbers hiding in plain sight. This family-friendly trail uses the Dewey Decimal Classification to turn a browse through the shelves into a gentle lesson in place value, ordering and intervals — with printable clue cards and classroom follow-ups for teachers.
Pistons, Pulleys and Pencil Work: A Family Count Round the Pump House
Family Activities

Pistons, Pulleys and Pencil Work: A Family Count Round the Pump House

A family-friendly maths trail for Abbey Pumping Station, with quick puzzles on levers, gears, cylinder volumes and boiler efficiency. Bring a pencil, a clipboard and a willingness to estimate before you calculate.
Trowels, Grids and Guesses: A Probability Dig Beneath Leicester
Problem Solving

Trowels, Grids and Guesses: A Probability Dig Beneath Leicester

Richard III's grave was found under a Leicester car park, but the maths behind the search is just as interesting as the bones. This classroom-ready activity uses grids, sampling and Bayesian thinking to show students how evidence should change their minds.