By Vladlena Kazantseva
This summer, around eighty young mathematicians from schools across London and beyond came together at Mill Hill School for three very full days of mathematics.
The students, about to enter Years 6 and 8, spent the Camp solving challenging problems in Maths Circles, listening to lectures, discussing ideas with mathematicians and one another and finally putting all of this into practice in Maths Battles.
The programme was deliberately ambitious. There was logic, combinatorics and graph theory; lectures from Ed Southall, Rob Eastaway and Alex Bellos; a mini-course with Victor Kleptsyn; and plenty of problems which were not supposed to give up their answers immediately.
But the mathematics itself was only part of what we wanted the Camp to be about.
One of the most important things we can give young people who love mathematics is the chance to meet others who feel the same way. Throughout the Camp, students worked in the format of Maths Circles: tackling difficult problems together, discussing different approaches, explaining their reasoning, getting stuck, changing their minds and trying again.
They were guided by a large team of experienced tutors, all with strong mathematical backgrounds and a genuine enthusiasm both for mathematics and for mathematical education, in particular, for teaching in a way that develops mathematical thinking rather than simply getting to the right answer.
Over the three days, that way of working became increasingly natural. Students who had been rather quiet on the first morning were, by the final Maths Battles, standing up to defend their solutions, questioning one another’s arguments and engaging seriously with different ideas.
That atmosphere was perhaps our favourite part of the Camp: serious mathematics, but also a lot of conversation, laughter and new friendships. Students quickly discovered the pleasure of being surrounded by others who were just as happy to spend time thinking about a difficult problem.
This is also part of the wider ambition of 1729 Maths School. We want to build a mathematical community that extends well beyond Mill Hill itself, and to give young mathematicians opportunities to meet, work together and discover that mathematics can be difficult, creative, sociable and enormous fun.
By Friday afternoon, the Camp felt almost celebratory. Alex Bellos closed the three days with our final lecture, and every student went home with a signed copy of So You Think You’ve Got Problems?, and, we hope, some new mathematical friends, a few favourite problems, and several others they still couldn’t quite stop thinking about.