PhD Maths-UK Qualified Teacher-A-Level/IB Examiner. Maths preparation: 7+, 11+, 13+, GCSEs, IB & A-Level, Undergrads. **Tiered rates** : £75ph up to GCSEs & £85 A-Level. Adults from £90.

Find out more about Evangelos

• When did you develop an interest in your chosen field and in private tutoring?

  For me, mathematics arrived before teaching did. I grew up in Greece and studied mathematics at the University of Patras, where I became interested in how large systems behave when we cannot track every part of them. This led me into statistical mechanics and eventually to a PhD at Queen Mary University of London and later to postdoctoral study.
  
  Tutoring started alongside my studies in 2016, informally at first, helping friends and then their younger siblings. What kept me in was noticing that the students who struggled with mathematics were almost never incapable. For those students, the issue was a gap in two or three preceding topics, but nobody was looking for it. Finding that gap is still the part of the job I enjoy most, and it is why I now spend more of my week teaching than researching.

• Tell us more about the subject you teach, the topics you like to discuss with students (and possibly those you like a little less).

  I mainly teach mathematics and physics, from first entrance papers through to university modules, and I also provide support with projects and theses. Pure mathematics and mechanics are my favourite things to teach because these parts of the syllabus allow a student to check their abstract thinking against the world. I also enjoy probability and statistics. I believe that decision-making theory, ruled by these fields of study, will play a major part in the development of science in the near future, given the rise of Artificial Intelligence. My own research is on memory and delay in decision making, and one paper I co-authored analysed the statistics of flight delays.
  
  The topic I like least is anything taught as a set of steps to memorise. Certain trigonometric identities get taught that way and students come to me hating them, when the problem is not the identity but the way it was introduced.

• Did you have any role models; a teacher that inspired you?

  I arrived at the University of Patras intending to study computer science. After a few lectures from one professor, I changed to mathematics instead. The professor taught dynamical systems and chaos theory, showing me that a system of differential equations could describe how real phenomena change over time, and also how fragile that description is. Tiny differences in where you start can lead somewhere completely different, which is not what determinism had led me to expect. This concept later became popularized as the "butterfly effect".
  
  That sent me into the philosophy of the subject: how Newton's Principia shaped the modern world, and how Lagrange, Poincaré and later Lorenz showed that we can usually forecast but almost never predict. It is a distinction I still use with students, because it is the honest answer to why probability exists.
  
  The same professor went on to supervise my MSc thesis on entropy and non-linear systems, which became the stepping stone to statistical mechanics and then to my PhD on memory and decision making. I would not be doing this work without those lectures, and it is a reminder that a single teacher in one term can redirect an entire career.

• What do you think are the qualities required to be a good tutor?

  Diagnosis first. Anyone with a degree can explain a topic, but the skill is working out which topic actually needs explaining, and that is usually not the one the student named. Second, patience of a specific kind: the willingness to go back three years in the syllabus without making a student feel that going back is a failure. Third, honesty. If I do not think I am the right person for a student, or if a target grade is unrealistic in the time available, I say so at the start and set expectations so that parents are aware. Fourth, communication with parents, who are paying and are entitled to know what is happening. Fifth, and this is the one people underrate, good notes. A student should be able to revise from the session two months later.I provide those usually as PDFs right after our lessons.

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  One student I worked with was preparing for the 11+ and hoping to gain entry to highly selective schools, including Westminster Under School and St Olave’s. He had strong mathematical foundations, but under timed conditions he became anxious, lost focus and struggled to decide which method a question required.
  
  What surprised me was that the problem was not a lack of knowledge. The mathematics was there, but different topics had become tangled together. We therefore stopped timing papers for a while and rebuilt the structure: first the concept, then the method, and then a visual interpretation through diagrams, tables or graphs. I often connect algebra and geometry in this way, because they are usually two descriptions of the same idea.
  
  Once our understanding became more organised, we gradually reintroduced timed questions, then full papers. By the end, he was regularly finishing with five or six minutes to spare and eventually received an offer from St Olave’s. It reinforced the fact I still believe strongly: speed usually comes after clarity, not before it.

• What were the difficulties or challenges you faced or still facing in your subject?

  Two, both useful. The first was learning to teach, as opposed to knowing mathematics. A doctorate trains you to talk to people who already share your vocabulary. Explaining a method to an inexperienced thirteen-year-old is an entirely different skill. That is why I completed the Qualified Teacher Status with the Department for Education in 2022, a qualification most private tutors do not hold. This changed how I plan a session.
  
  The second is ongoing. Working with students who have dyslexia, dyscalculia or ADHD taught me that my default explanation is only one of several, and often the wrong one. I trained as a support worker at the Queen Mary Disability and Dyslexia Centre partly for that reason, and I still adjust pace and materials constantly.

• Do you have a particular passion? Is it teaching in general or an element of the subject or something completely different?

  Teaching is the honest answer, and specifically the moment when a student stops asking whether their answer is right because they can already tell. Outside mathematics I hike whenever I can get out of London. I also help look after my family's olive grove and produce a small amount of olive oil each year, which is about as far from statistical mechanics as it is possible to get, keeping my head straight after several weeks of examinations.

• What makes you a Superprof (besides answering these interview questions :-P) ?

  I believe that I am a Superprof due to the unique combination of qualities and skills I possess: a PhD in Mathematical Sciences, a Qualified Teacher Status, my membership at the London Mathematical Society and over 5000 hours of one-to-one teaching since 2016.
  
  That means I can teach a seven year old sitting an entrance paper or an undergraduate resitting linear algebra in the same afternoon, and adapt to whichever exam board, IB programme, AP course or SAT the student is facing.
  
  But the reason families keep working with me over the years is much simpler: I find the real gaps, I rebuild from there, I send notes they can revise from, and I tell parents honestly how it is going. And above all, I am kind and patient - which I believe is the most important value.