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!


Heavy Pockets - Ana's Solution

Thank you to Ana for sending us her excellent work on Heavy Pockets.

She works systematically to find out how many coins Charlie and Alison would need to carry and then suggests the coin denominations that she would use.

She also shows clearly the coin denominations she would use for all amounts up to £1.

Here are her findings.

 

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Pairwise Puzzler

You may wish to take a look at Pairwise Adding before trying this problem

 

Alison reckons that if Charlie gives her the sums of all the pairs of numbers from any set of five numbers, she'll be able to work out the original five numbers.

Charlie gives her this set of pair sums: $0$, $2$, $4$, $4$, $6$, $8$, $9$, $11$, $13$, $15$.

Can you work out Charlie's original five numbers?

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Magic Letters - Aimee's solution

Thank you to Aimee for sending us her solution to Magic Letters.
 
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What's your Game?

 

All the games you can find here have one thing in common: there is no rolling of dice or flipping of coins. In other words, there's no luck involved. This means they are all about strategy. The cleverer you are at playing them, the bigger your chance of winning.

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Folding and Cutting - A Starting Point

 

Would you like to see how the piece of A4 paper pictured in Folding and Cutting was folded?  Then take a look below ...

This first image shows the two fold lines, which have been marked in black:

FoldingCutting1.jpg

 

This second image was taken after the first fold:

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