What is this talk/activity about?
The Pythagorean Theorem is one of the oldest theorems in mathematics, dating back thousands of years. In this talk, we start with the Pythagorean Theorem (and its proof) and consider variations on its theme that take us to Beal's Conjecture, as yet unresolved and with a $1 000 000 prize for its solution.
It's important to realize that mathematics is not all known, and it is fairly easy to state a question whose solution is not yet known, even starting from a very familiar result.
Age/Year Group
Key Stages 3-5 (Years 9-13, ages 13-18 years, including GCSEs and A Level study or equivalent)
UK National Curriculum Subject Links
Maths
Related Staff Member
Professor James W Anderson
Professor James W Anderson is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Southampton.
He is known for his work on spaces of deformations of Kleinian groups, which are discrete groups of isometries of hyperbolic spaces, and on mapping class groups of hyperbolic surfaces. He is also the author of a popular undergraduate textbook on Hyperbolic Geometry.
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