The other place

I took part in many seminars, camps and competitions as a high school student, but PROMYS is unlike any of them. The speed of lectures is unusual. Maths camp typically take a week and lectures are on various topics. So each of them contains just brief description of some part of mathematics, its main problems and results and sometimes even a sketch proof.

What happens here is exact opposite. All lectures are about Number Theory or Graph Theory and they progress really slowly. So slowly that students have an opportunity to derive results themselves and so the lectures are just revision for them. Some students proved in less than a week the Fundamental theorem of Arithmetic. Deriving this theorem takes an hour during usual maths camp lecture.

Proportion of mathematical activities is unusually high. Students get Problem Sets on the weekdays and are expected to hand in the solutions on the same day. They can spend rest of the time doing projects and extra problems. A common sentence is “I was afraid that you run out of things to do, so here are some extra.”

Returning students can attend more advanced lectures on Graph Theory and they get harder project. It even happens from time to time that students discover an interesting problem and they results and ideas are published.

Weekends are more relaxed.

Approach of participants to Mathematical Olympiad is different than what I am used to. Only two students took part in International Mathematical Olympiad and none of them got any medals. Average Czech or Slovak camp has much more successful participants in this aspect. This might be caused by the selection procedure. In order to get to PROMYS you need to demonstrate good knowledge of mathematics and ability to learn. In order to get to other maths camps, problem solving skills are essential.

Great thing is that counsellors are encouraged to do their own maths. So students see that we are mathematician in the first place. Lectures we give to each other will be part of a yearbook. I hope that it will help someone to learn an interesting things. It might also help with getting funding for next years.

PROMYS is rather prestigious programme, which is not very well known in Czech republic and Slovakia. PROMYS exists for 26 years and until this year it only took place in Boston. This is the first year of PROMYS Europe in Oxford. That is Clay Mathematics Institute – foundation responsible for the project – moves slowly to Europe.

Last year PROMYS invited more Europeans to Boston so they create a core of the community. The idea is that some participants might eventually want to become counsellors.

The première in Europe is gorgeous. Some prominent mathematicians are going to give a talk to sixteen high school students. This weekend it is going to be Andrew Wiles. Probably the most famous contemporary mathematician. He became famous for his proof of The Fermat's Last Theorem, which was an open problem for more than 350 years despite the effort of mathematical community of the world.