On the morning of the 25th MMM competition, co-organiser Gijs Schoenmakers casually leans on the sign-up desk. “To give you an idea of how long we’ve been doing this: I guarantee you that in a few minutes, Hans [Peters] will joke that the first exercise is for students to find their rooms.” He grins. And he is right, too.

40 teams x 5 high school students x 25 years= 5,000 participants

The small exchange in the lobby is exemplary for the rest of the day. The MMM runs like a well-oiled machine, its formula relatively unchanged over the years. Teams of up to five high school students – mostly travelling from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands – spend their Saturday afternoon solving mathematical puzzles. Meanwhile, their teachers are free to attend lectures by UM researchers.

Follow some of the participants during the 25th edition of the MMM on 26 January 2019:

30 students + 4 students = 1 shared problem

These days, the MMM is held purely for the love of mathematics. The math-heavy bachelor’s programmes of the two organizing departments – Quantitative Economics and Data Science and Knowledge Engineering – are flourishing, each drawing triple-digit numbers of students each year.

This hasn’t always been the case. The math competition was originally meant to boost enrolment. Professors Ralf Peeters (DKE) and Hans Peters (QE) are involved with the MMM since the very beginning. “Our two study programmes started out around the same time”, Hans says. “The demand was not exactly overwhelming. I think we had less than thirty students in the first year.” Ralf: “I arrived here in ’94. At the end of that year, I saw the first students. All four of them! It was very obvious that we needed to do something about visibility.”

2.5 hours / 5 exercises = panic

Although the reason for hosting the competition changed long ago, the MMM still dishes up five recreational math problems each year. “Some seem very challenging,” says Jean Derks. “But they may be easy to solve if you look at them in a different way. Lean back, take a deep breath and try to figure out what is going on. Don’t frantically start trying things.” Co-organiser Hans Peters agrees. “Once we explain the solutions, students often realize: oh, it wasn’t that hard. But yeah, if you’re sitting there and have only 2.5 hours to solve everything…”

Explaining the solutions at the end of the day is something all organisers look forward to. Ralf Peeters: “The best moment is when I’m up there explaining the answers and you hear a buzz going through the audience. That’s when recognition kicks in: why didn’t we find this solution? Other groups may start shouting: yes! Yes! When we post the scores, it’s devastation and enthusiasm all at the same time.”

Solution unknown

Of course, some remarkable moments inevitably presented themselves during the competition’s long history. Gijs Schoenmakers remembers how in 2010, he included a problem that even the organization wasn’t sure they had solved. Gijs: “The question was to find the best possible solution. I was very curious to see what they would find, but unfortunately no one topped our answer.” Future participants need not worry though: “It’s the only time we included an unsolved problem.”

Karin van den Boorn recalls two particular events: “Quite a lot of teachers come back every year. Recently, one of them attended for the last time and wanted to take a picture with us as a memory. Another year, we had so many groups participating – around 80 – that we had to use two different buildings. We capped attendance at 40 teams after that.”