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What is the Millennium Mathematics Project?

The Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) is a maths education initiative for ages 5 to 19 and the general public, based at the University of Cambridge but active nationally and internationally.

The MMP was launched in 1999 as a partnership between the Faculties of Mathematics and Education at Cambridge, bringing together a number of existing activities, which we have now developed and extended. We aim to support maths education and promote the development of mathematical skills and understanding, particularly through enrichment and extension activities beyond the school curriculum.

Our broader goals are to help people of all ages and abilities share in the excitement of mathematics and understand the enormous range and importance of its applications and its vital contribution to shaping the everyday world.

Our programmes have a national (and in several cases international) impact. Our free web-based resources are used by teachers, pupils and parents all over the world: in 2007 our websites received over 9.6 million site visits in total, or more than 200 million hits. We have worked face-to-face and through 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 and Birmingham. We have also run pupil workshops, hands-on activity days and teacher courses in Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, and have linked UK schools by live video-conference to schools in South Africa, India, Singapore and Pakistan.

 

What do we do?

The MMP's activities include a number of complementary programmes. You can download a summary of our activities, or you may wish to go directly to one of our maths resource websites using the buttons in the top right-hand corner of the page, or by clicking on the links below:

• The NRICH website publishes free mathematics enrichment resources (puzzles, problems, investigations, games) for ages 5 to 19. NRICH staff can also visit schools to run pupil workshops and teacher courses.

• The Plus website publishes a free online magazine aimed at ages 15+ including feature articles on mathematics and its applications to science, art and society, interviews, reviews and news. Plus also includes a digital careers library highlighting the enormous range of job opportunities which can be opened up by studying maths.

• Motivate is a real-time video-conferencing project which links professional mathematicians and scientists, often university researchers, to primary and secondary schools throughout the UK and overseas to explore mathematics beyond the basic school curriculum.

• We have a Hands-On Maths Roadshow which can be taken to primary and secondary schools or to public events to promote the enjoyment of mathematics (download our leaflet for more information (PDF, or a Word booking form only if you wish to email it back).

• In October 2004 we took on Simon Singh's enormously popular Enigma Schools Project. We will visit your school with a WW2 Enigma machine and deliver code breaking workshops designed to engage students from 8 to 18 with mathematics by exploring cryptography through the ages.

• We organise free popular maths lectures for primary and secondary schools and the general public, held in Cambridge.

• We co-ordinate the STIMULUS programme, which places volunteer Cambridge University students in local primary and secondary schools to help with maths and science teaching
  
  
• We host the Cambridgeshire Further Mathematics Centre, part of the national Further Mathematics Network, which aims to provide Further Mathematics tuition at AS and A2 level for students in schools within the region which cannot offer the subject at all or can only offer partial provision.
  
  
• The MMP provides co-ordination in the Eastern Region for the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics, promoting and supporting maths teachers' continuing professional development.
  

For more background information about our activities please visit the Projects section of this website.