A Butterfly Effect
Two messages in one
02 November 2026
On 24th October, I was in a packed audience of over 400 at the opening keynote of the BCME maths conference. Andy Noyes, Director of the Observatory of Maths Education at Nottingham University, was talking about how maths education is a complex system, full of sliding-doors moments. Small changes (such as a switch of teacher) can have a significant impact on a student's eventual outcome. This is popularly known as the 'butterfly effect': a seemingly insignificant event having far-reaching consequences.
And then, incredibly, a real butterfly fluttered across the stage.
You couldn't make it up!
Alas in the heat of the moment, Andy didn't make the connection. But the butterfly had another lesson to teach us. Until then, the audience had been absorbed in the talk. Now a butterfly was fluttering around Andy's head, looking at one point as though it might land on him, which caused a murmur and then a ripple of laughter.
Suddenly, all 400 of us were watching the butterfly.
For perhaps ten seconds, nothing educational that Andy said was going to register. We were all wondering where the butterfly would go next. Thankfully, it flew off, never to be seen again. Attention returned to the talk. Had it stayed much longer, it might well have been the butterfly rather than the keynote that people talked about afterwards.
This is a rather different butterfly effect. In classrooms and lecture theatres, distractions are constantly lurking just below the surface. A sniffle, an opening door, a flickering light – any of these can trigger a sudden loss of focus.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to capture pupils' attention: making lessons engaging, sparking curiosity and generating interest. But perhaps we spend rather less time thinking about how easily we can lose it, however engaging the content is.
There's little we can do to prevent every distraction, but it's useful to have an armoury of responses. The first rule? Acknowledge it quickly (as Andy did), then move on. Don't give it more attention than it deserves.
When were you last a victim of this butterfly effect? And how did you recover?
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