Exploring Maths

Mathematics is not about learning facts declared by someone, but is about a creative discovery and validation of the universal, hidden connections and logical consequences. It is a journey to a place yet to be discovered that everybody can go to independently of time, location and any special props. The more time we spend there exploring the area, the more we understand its nature. We aim to explore the subject with this mindset through two seemingly easy, but in fact very deep and rich problems. The idea is that the group figures out each hidden layer, the underlying structures (almost) completely by themselves through considering and analysing concrete examples in active group discussions in an interactive way. The first example is about the game Dobble where our main aim is to understand how it is possible to construct the cards so that there is a unique common symbol at any pair. The other one is about a popular (but very sneaky) meme. The underlying details are typically not taught at school and some parts are hard by default, but are completely accessible to high school students when viewed from the right perspective which we will explore at the classes.