Talking about effective altruism is a constraint, as is talking about mathematics. Being a subject society makes it easier to get people from that subject to attend; it also makes it harder to convince people from outside that subject to even consider coming.
TMS pulls 80+ people to most of its talks, which are not generally from especially famous mathematicians. TCSS got 600 people for a Pensrose-Rees event. Both TCSS and TMS have grown rapidly in 18-24 months, having existed for far longer. This seems to indicate that randomly selected student societies have low hanging fruit. It doesn’t seem incongruous to suggest that OUIS, OUSS and GWWC have the capacity to at least double their attendances—the TMS did in one term, and doubled the number of events (so a x4 in person-talks).
Talking about effective altruism is a constraint, as is talking about mathematics.
One constrains you to a subject with thousands of high-status practitioners and hundreds of students—the other restricts you to a subject with one high-status practitioner and no students.
Whose status ordering are you using? Getting someone who is not a mathematician to TMS is harder; within the Natural Sciences it is possible, and there are O(1) Computer Scientists, philosophers or others. For the historians, classicists or other subjects, mathmos are not high status. In terms of EtG, these groups are valuable—most traders are not quants.
Talking about effective altruism is a constraint, as is talking about mathematics. Being a subject society makes it easier to get people from that subject to attend; it also makes it harder to convince people from outside that subject to even consider coming.
TMS pulls 80+ people to most of its talks, which are not generally from especially famous mathematicians. TCSS got 600 people for a Pensrose-Rees event. Both TCSS and TMS have grown rapidly in 18-24 months, having existed for far longer. This seems to indicate that randomly selected student societies have low hanging fruit. It doesn’t seem incongruous to suggest that OUIS, OUSS and GWWC have the capacity to at least double their attendances—the TMS did in one term, and doubled the number of events (so a x4 in person-talks).
One constrains you to a subject with thousands of high-status practitioners and hundreds of students—the other restricts you to a subject with one high-status practitioner and no students.
Whose status ordering are you using? Getting someone who is not a mathematician to TMS is harder; within the Natural Sciences it is possible, and there are O(1) Computer Scientists, philosophers or others. For the historians, classicists or other subjects, mathmos are not high status. In terms of EtG, these groups are valuable—most traders are not quants.