Welcome to CBSC Maths

What is Maths? How exactly does it work? And what do three siblings trying to share a cake have to do with it? In How to Bake Pi, Maths professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of Mathematics, powered, unexpectedly, by insights from the kitchen. We learn how the bechamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number five, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard. At the heart of it all is Cheng's work on category theory, a cutting-edge "Mathematics of Mathematics," that is about figuring out how Maths works.

Combined with her infectious enthusiasm for cooking and true zest for life, Cheng's perspective on math is a funny journey through a vast territory no popular book on math has explored before. So, what is Maths? Let's look for the answer in the kitchen.

Millennium Problems

The Millennium Prize Problems are seven well-known complex mathematical problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. The Clay Institute has pledged a US$1 million prize for the first correct solution to each problem.

The Clay Mathematics Institute officially designated the title Millennium Problem for the seven unsolved mathematical problems, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, Hodge conjecture, Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness, P versus NP problem, Riemann hypothesis, Yang–Mills existence and mass gap, and the Poincaré conjecture at the Millennium Meeting held on May 24, 2000. Thus, on the official website of the Clay Mathematics Institute, these seven problems are officially called the Millennium Problems.

To date, the only Millennium Prize problem to have been solved is the Poincaré conjecture. The Clay Institute awarded the monetary prize to Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman in 2010. However, he declined the award as it was not also offered to Richard S. Hamilton, upon whose work Perelman built.

History and Culture

Millennium Problem for you:

The Hodge Conjecture

The sixth Millennium Problem pretty much sums up why a lot of people don’t like maths. It is by far the hardest to explain in any terms, never mind simple ones, it is incredibly far out of reality and everyday experiences and mathematicians can’t agree on what the actual problem is – never mind how to go about trying to find a solution. I just want to emphasise this last point: depending on which mathematician you ask to define the problem; you will most likely get a different version of what it actually is. The official statement on the Clay Institute website sums it up perfectly: “The answer to this conjecture determines how much of the solution set of a system of algebraic equations can be defined in terms of further algebraic equations.” So if we have a solution to a set of equations, is that solution also the solution to another different set of equations. Solution, solution, solution.

Submit your answer to

tr12416@carshaltonboys.org

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Important Dates for Maths:

Year 7 Assessment: W/C 22/03/2021

Year 8 Assessment: W/C 22/03/2021

Year 9 Assessment: W/C 22/03/2021

Year 10 Assessment: W/C 22/03/2021

Year 11 Assessments: Gold Monday's

Year 12 Assessments: Blue Monday's

Year 13 Assessments: Blue Monday's

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