Who we serve
“To share in the delight and the intellectual experience of mathematics — to fly where before we walked — that is the goal of a mathematical education.”
The Stanford Math Circle attracts a fascinating bunch of kids. Some are high school students, and a few are still in elementary school, but these days most of the regulars seem to be in middle school.
What they all have in common is an obvious eagerness to share in what Fields medalist William Thurston calls “the delight and the intellectual experience of mathematics.” They all want to fly, where before they walked.
Probably it’s also fair to say that the typical Stanford Math Circle attendee has spent a lot more time thinking and reading about mathematics than the average kid his or her age. Some of our regulars can immediately tell you all the prime factors of 917, and others know exactly how to add up the reciprocals of all the square numbers (to get pi squared divided by 6.) But what they all like best is joining forces to get to the bottom of deeply mysterious things — they like grappling with striking mathematical phenomena they’ve never studied, and know nothing whatever about.
So even though some of us may know some pretty exotic facts, they’re usually not of much help when we’re doing what we like best. At the Stanford Math Circle, what we mostly need is not knowledge, but ideas. And yours may be the very ones we’ve been missing!