The Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) was set up within the University of Cambridge in 1999 as a joint project between the Faculties of Mathematics and Education. We aim to support maths education for pupils of all abilities from ages 5 to 19 and promote the development of mathematical skills and understanding, particularly through enrichment and extension activities beyond the school curriculum. We also engage in activities designed to improve the public understanding and awareness of mathematics.

The project has a national remit. We have worked face-to-face, running pupil workshops, hands-on activities and live video-conference links with hundreds of primary and secondary schools all over the UK – from isolated rural schools in Wales, Cornwall and Cumbria to inner-city London, Glasgow and Belfast.

Our free web-based resources are accessed by users all over the world: between January and December 2007 our websites attracted over 9.6 million site visits in total, or more than 200 million hits.

The MMP’s various programmes have won many awards and our resources have been repeatedly commended by the UK Government’s Department for Education and Skills.

In February 2006 the Queen presented the project with the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education (the counterpart to the Queen’s Award for Industry), honouring ‘outstanding achievement and excellence’ at world-class level.

NRICH - online maths enrichment resources, maths discussion communities and face-to-face work with schools

The NRICH website publishes a monthly issue of free mathematical enrichment material aimed at Key Stage 1 through to Key Stage 5 - problems, puzzles, games, investigations and articles.

The NRICH material encourages creative, confident approaches to mathematical thinking and can be used with all ability ranges. We also encourage pupils to send in individual solutions to problems for publication on the site, adding to the sense of an online mathematical community.

NRICH is very popular - in 2007 the site attracted over 3.9 million site visits during the year (more than 78 million hits): the number of users has increased by over 25% a year every year since 1999.

NRICH also offers an online discussion and mentoring service, AskNRICH , staffed by Cambridge University student volunteers, which answers mathematical queries from students of all ages (our youngest users are around 8) and provides a forum for an online mathematics community to support children from any background. We also provide a mentoring scheme for mathematics students at the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth at Warwick.

The NRICH team is engaged in a very significant amount of face-to-face activity with schools, running continuing professional development courses for teachers, visiting schools to run activities with pupils and mentoring practising teachers. Members of the NRICH team have, for example, recently visited areas of the UK ranging from Wales to South Shields to run pupil workshops and masterclasses. In September 2003 we began a year-long pilot programme in inner-city broughs in the east of London, running after-school mathematics enrichment workshops for selected pupils from local schools, funded by the Shine Trust. This work won NRICH the Hackney Learning Trust Education Provider of the Year Award, and is now entering its fifth year.

Plus - popular understanding of mathematics web magazine and careers library

Plus is a free online magazine published five times a year, aimed at students from 15+ and the general public. It features articles and news stories about the widest possible range of the applications of mathematics to the sciences, arts, commerce and society, bridging the gap between the media presentation of science and the mathematics encountered at school.

Plus also has a large digital careers library encouraging the further study of maths at A-level or as a degree through showcasing the huge range of opportunities which studying maths can open up. The careers section features interviews with mathematicians in a range of different fields ranging from computer games design to defence analysis, medical statistics, financial modelling or architecture.

In 2007 the Plus website attracted over 3.3 million site visits (or more than 78 million hits) during the year. In July 2001 the site won the prestigious international Webby award for the best Science site on the Internet, joining winners in other categories including CNN, the BBC and National Geographic.

We have also produced a set of mathematics careers posters for secondary schools, based on the material in the careers library section of the website. 6,000 free sets have been distributed to schools around the UK and further sets can be ordered from the Plus website .

Motivate - live video-conferencing links with primary and secondary schools

Motivate is a live video-conferencing programme linking leading mathematicians, physicists and engineers to primary and secondary schools across the UK, particularly in areas of social disadvantage. The aim of the programme is to enrich children's mathematical experience and help to raise educational aspirations.

In the videoconferencing sessions, prominent mathematicians and mathematical scientists talk to the students about why they chose to study maths and pursue research as a career, and then discuss their own research area. Secondary topics covered so far include, among others, fractals, chaos, the sun, non-Euclidean topology, Euler's relation, gyroscopes and helicopters, mazes, the maths of low temperature physics, and probability. Primary topics have included helicopters, mathemagic and division with remainders.

Linked to the video-conferences, we produce teaching resources giving students the opportunity to work on projects that enrich the normal curriculum. These are frequently cross-curricular, and give students the chance to work in the same way that professional mathematicians do. It also allows them to develop transferable skills in motivating their groups and presenting their research. The aim is to raise the aspirations of the students, to stretch them intellectually, to develop their confidence and presentation skills and to show that mathematics might have a part to play in their futures.

So far we have worked with schools in all areas of the UK - England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. We have also created international links between UK schools and South Africa, Singapore, Pakistan and India.

Around 100 schools each year participate directly in the video-conferences, at Key Stage 2, 3, 4 and 5 - over 3,000 pupils annually.

In 2007 the project website, where transcripts of the speakers' talks, teachers notes and project work topics are freely available to any school whether or not they have participated in the video-conferences, attracted over 500,000 site visits (more than 8.4 million hits).

Maths Thesaurus

The multilingual website at http://thesaurus.maths.org holds a network of 4500 school and university level mathematical concepts and their interrelations. Each concept is described in up to 9 languages - English, Danish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak and Spanish. Concepts relate to others through 'broader', 'narrower', 'references', 'referenced by' or 'see also' relations, and an innovative visual browser may be used to navigate this concept map. The thesauruslso includes an extensive gallery of illustrations.

The thesaurus can be installed into your browser by dragging a link to your bookmarks bar so it is always available as a reference when viewing other mathematics or science related web sites. Clicking on the thesaurus bookmark will redisplay the page you are viewing with all mathematical words highlighted and linked to their definitions.

Hands-On Maths Roadshow

We visit primary and secondary schools and shopping centres across the UK with a Hands On Maths Roadshow presenting creative methods of exploring mathematics through concrete problem solving and strategic reasoning. The Roadshow visits around 75 schools a year all over the UK, from Scotland to Cornwall.

The ideas explored in these events can be followed up in more depth afterwards through the materials published on the NRICH website. We also run a version of the Roadshow as the Hands-On Maths Fair each year in National Science Week in Cambridge.

To book the Roadshow or find out more download our booking form or click here .

Enigma Schools Project

We have taken over Simon Singh's enormously popular Enigma Schools Project. We will visit your school with a genuine WW2 Enigma machine and deliver code breaking workshops designed to engage students of all ages with mathematics by exploring cryptograhy through the ages. The workshops include both a talk on the history of codes and cryptanalysis, and hands-on codebreaking activities.

For further information and bookings see the Enigma webpage.

STIMULUS - placing Cambridge student volunteers in maths and science classes

On a local level, we co-ordinate STIMULUS , a peer-assisted learning programme offering training and placements in local primary and secondary schools to Cambridge University students. The programme involves around 100 students each term from a wide range of disciplines, including mathematics, engineering, physics, computer science, biology, zoology, natural sciences and law, who help with classes in primary and secondary schools around the city of Cambridge.

Around 175 Cambridge students a year volunteer in the programme, each spending at least one afternoon each week for a full term in schools.

Cambridgeshire Further Mathematics Centre - support, teaching and promotion of Further Maths A Level

In March 2006 we launched a regional Further Mathematics Centre for Cambridgeshire , part of the national Further Mathematics Network funded and overseen by MEI. The Further Maths Centre aims to provide teaching of AS and A2 Further Maths to students in the region whose schools either cannot offer the subject at all or are seeking external teaching and support for particular modules. We also run revision days open to other schools in the region, and enrichment days open to all schools.

For more information see the Centre webpages or contact the Cambridgeshire Further Mathematics Centre co-ordinator

Public and schools lectures

We also run a local programme of popular maths lectures for primary and secondary schools and the general public, held in Cambridge. Past lectures have included John Conway talking about the Game of Life and Simon Singh on codebreaking, with other topics ranging from paper-folding & mathematical magic tricks (for primary schools) to modelling climate change and string theory. Information about forthcoming lectures is available here .

Professor John D Barrow FRS, the MMP's Director, also gives over 30 public talks a year around the world to schools, the general public and other audiences.