Wild Maths

Wild maths is mathematics without bounds. Here, you are free to roam and develop as a mathematician. We invite you to embark on a mathematical adventure!

Mathematics is a creative subject. It involves spotting patterns, making connections, finding new ways of looking at things and using what you already know in new contexts. Creative mathematicians play around with examples, draw pictures, have the courage to experiment and ask good questions.

We provide games, investigations, stories and spaces to explore, where we know there are discoveries to be made. Some have starting points, some a big question and others offer you a free space to investigate. Have a go at anything that catches your eye. You can find the full collection of activities, and explore challenges and investigations that are linked by some shared mathematical areas, by clicking on the 'Pathways' link in the top menu.

We'd love you to share your ideas and discoveries. You can share ideas via the comments at the bottom of each resource, or email us by clicking on the 'Share your discoveries' link at the bottom of each page.

Happy exploring!


Pairwise Adding

 

Charlie chose five numbers: $2$, $3$, $4$, $7$, $10$.

He added together pairs of numbers from his set, and got the following totals: $5$, $7$, $9$, $10$, $11$, $12$.

Can you find the totals that Charlie has missed?
 

Choose your own set of five numbers, and work out all the possible sums of pairs.

How do you know you've found them all?

How many pair sums would there be if you started with six numbers? Or seven numbers? Or ...?
 

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Drips

 

The game of Drips is a real challenge! Are you up for it?  (You may like to have a go at one or more of our slightly easier versions first: Last Bead, Driplets and Droplets.)

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Generating Triples

If the sides of a right angled triangle are $a$, $b$ and $c$ units, with $c$ being the hypotenuse or longest side, we know by Pythagoras' Theorem that $a^2+b^2=c^2$.

Charlie has been looking for examples where $a$, $b$ and $c$ are all whole numbers. These sets are called Pythagorean Triples.

He drew a table:

table of square numbers

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Numbers and Shapes

You probably know something about Triangular Numbers 4 Triangular Number shapesetc.

You’re also likely to have come across Square Numbers Four square number shapes  etc.

Maybe you’ve explored things like:- 1 + 2 + 3 or 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 or 2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 and 5 + 10 + 15 etc.

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Can You Make Your Name?

We spotted the photo above on Twitter with this tweet:

TwitterScreenshot3.png

 

Wow! Is it really true that each of those letters was made by folding a piece of paper and then making just one cut?

Take a look at this video to find out more ...

 

 

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Dodecagon dissection

You may find it useful to have paper, ruler, compasses and scissors to try this task.

How could you work out the area of a regular dodecagon?
One way to find the area of shapes is to cut them up and reassemble them into shapes where the area is easier to calculate.

Start by creating your dodecagon. You could use GeoGebra or construct it with a ruler and compasses.

Click below to see some instructions for constructing a dodecagon, or watch the video.

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