Frontier

MATH IS UNFINISHED — mathematics is not a closed book of answers but a living, growing story; there are famous questions no one has solved, and people all over the world are discovering brand-new math right now.

Loading audio…

Press play to listen along. The line being read lights up as you go.

Show full transcript

Loading transcript…

01 Opening

Frontier was a bright-eyed young fox who loved, more than anything, the edge of a map — the place where the drawn part stopped and the blank part began. Most creatures found the blank part a little frightening. Frontier found it the most exciting place in the world.

And she learned, to her delight, that math has an edge like that too.

"People think math is a big book of answers," she says, unrolling a great map on the floor. Most of it is filled in — neat, known, solved. But near the edges, the ink thins out, and then there is only blank paper. "They think every math question has already been answered and put in a book. It hasn't. Out here —" she taps the blank edge — "are questions nobody has ever solved. Some of them are simple enough for a child to ask. And no one on earth, so far, has found the answer."

02 Frontier

Frontier had always been drawn to edges, and this one thrilled her most of all.

She learned that math is not a finished thing. There are famous unsolved problems — questions written down long ago that the cleverest people who ever lived have not yet cracked. Some are so tricky, and so wanted, that great prizes wait for whoever solves them. And she learned something even more wonderful: that new math is discovered all the time. Every single year, people find patterns and truths that no one had ever seen before — and they are people of every background, from every part of the world, working today, right now.

Frontier sat with this and felt her heart lift. Math was not a museum, its doors closed and its treasures all catalogued. It was a frontier — a living edge, with blank pages still waiting, and room on them for anyone brave and curious enough to write. It made her feel, for the first time, that she was not too late. The best part of the map was not yet drawn.

03 Frontier

When she was older, Frontier trotted to the MathLore hall, where the stories of how math grew are kept, and where they had needed, badly, someone to remind the children that the story isn't over.

04 Frontier

She teaches the children that math is still being made.

"Everything you learn in school," she says, "is the known part of the map — the part people already filled in. And it's wonderful. But it is not the whole map." She points to the blank edge. "Out here are questions still open. Some are hard to even understand. But some are simple to ask, and still nobody knows. And every year, people all over the world — of every kind, from every place — draw a little more of the map, discovering math that never existed before."

"So math isn't finished," a girl says slowly.

"Math is not finished," says Frontier, eyes shining, "and it never will be. It's alive. Which means the story has blank pages left — and someone has to write on them. It might be someone from anywhere. It might, one day, be you. You are not too late. The best part of the map is still blank."

05 Closing

She still loves the edge of every map, and still cannot look at a blank page without a thrill.

The thing Frontier hopes the children carry is that mathematics is not a closed and finished book, but a living, growing story with room still left in it — and that new math is made, every year, by ordinary curious people from every corner of the world. Nobody is too late. There is always another blank page at the edge.

"Math isn't a museum," she tells them. "It's a frontier, still being drawn. There are questions no one has answered, and blank pages waiting — and one of them might, someday, be filled in by you."

When the hall empties, Frontier rolls up her great map, leaving the blank edge showing on purpose, and feels the wide, hopeful gladness she first felt at the edge of a map as a young fox: that the world is not all discovered, that the story is not all told, and that there is still, always, somewhere new to go.

The MathLore ensemble

Frontier is part of MathLore's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.