Creativity is very much the ability to join ideas that apparently have no relation to each other to create new forms of expression, making maths a creative pursuit. Maths consists of all sorts of patterns and symmetries, some of which we are aware of and some of which are still waiting to be discovered. Good mathematicians will use what they know to find connections that were not previously conceivable and thereby make new discoveries, both within the mathematical world itself and in applying it to the real world.

Statistics and probability – situations that have not yet come about can be more reliably predicted by using maths and stats creatively to project us into as yet unknown scenarios. The current forecasts regarding Covid-19 are an example of how the maths of past situations are being used to predict a variety of outcomes based on different paths we can take.

Maths and art – few people would argue that art is not a creative pursuit and maths has a long relationship with creating art. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man represents ideal human body proportions. Like other Renaissance painters and sculptors, he was fascinated by working out the proportions of a person’s facial features compared with their face and body size using mathematical ratios and using these calculations in creating art. Raranga (Māori weaving) techniques are tightly linked to maths too, featuring tessellations and patterns of repeated shapes that fit together precisely so that no gaps, spaces or overlapping occurs. The art world has also long been influenced by the Golden Ratio – a mathematical principle that expresses the ratio of two sums whereby their ratio is equal to the larger of the two quantities.

Maths and music – numbers and maths are often used to describe and teach music. Musical symbols have a lot in common with mathematical symbols, representing information such as divisions of time and lengths of notes. The Fibonacci sequence is seen in music too, in piano scales. Patterns are also an important feature in both maths and music, being used to predict what is coming next in music in much the same way that mathematical predictions are made.