What was one of the hardest math questions that you had to answer when you were in school?

Question: What was one of the hardest math questions that you had to answer when you were in school?
- Keywords:
  difficult,
  mathematics,
  questions,
  school
Asked by Archie D to paulterrill, Kirsty R, johneaston on 1 Apr 2025.
- John Easton answered on 1 Apr 2025:
  
  TBH I can’t remember. Personally I disliked pure maths because I didn’t see the point of it. Applied maths was my thing as you were trying to solve a real world problem. And that is the sort of maths that I’m doing on a frequent basis. None of it is really what you would call difficult maths – certainly nothing beyond GCSE level for the most part – but it’s being used to solve a specific problem, like how much data can I move over a network between two countries in a given time.

lucyrycroftsmith commented on 15 May 2025:

I remember once being asked to ‘prove’ that there are 180 degrees in the sum of the angles of a triangle. I had no idea what this idea of ‘proving’ meant, and how I could go about it. Did it mean convincing myself? Someone else? Did it mean writing words, or symbols, or both? In fact, there are many, many ways to do it – some even without words, or symbols! For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6EA7M154tM

Question: What was one of the hardest math questions that you had to answer when you were in school?