The day started with Mr. Benz asking us the questions: What is Math? What is Math to you?
Our replies included more simple things like “numbers, but also some letters”, “building blocks” and “glue”, but also other, more outside the box answers, such as “a universal language” or “a tool to help other sciences describe the universe”.
Subsequently, the question, whether Math is an invention or a discovery, arose. This is clearly a philosophical question which is pretty much unanswerable, and contrary to solving a math problem with set rules, this was a seemingly impossible but fun mind game.

Another thing we discussed was the meaning of Math as a creative art. These two things, “math” and creative” seem to have no correlation at first sight, as the math we are used to doing is often not as creative. However, discovering new formulas, or proofs, or methods of solving a math problem are certainly creative processes that are a large part of what math is.

After a long-awaited lunch break, the afternoon program was watching a movie about Andrew Wiles, the man who had made it his life’s mission to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. This unsolved mathematical riddle had fascinated him since he was a little boy, and after eight long years of calculation, he managed to achieve his goal.

We also did a lot of reading, about the difference between pure and applied mathematics, as well as axioms, proofs, and paradoxes, and we even looked at a mathematical paper about hipsters. Probably the most important thing that we learnt, is that math isn’t boring, people. Math can be creative, exiting, adventurous.
It might still not be everyone’s favorite subject, but there is definitely a lot more to it than we often think.

Alessandra Frank and Lilli Düvel