<p>For those of you who have done math research, how did you get started? Did you find a mentor and had him/her suggest topics... did you just sit down and research unproved theories and tried to prove them? How did you get started?</p>
<p>And how hard is it to find a math mentor? Do you just ask mathematicians you know/ in your region? How many are willing to work with high school students?</p>
<p>How about medical research?</p>
<p>Medical research is relatively easy to get mentors for... I personally have a lot of connections because my mom has a PhD in Immunology. But as a whole, medical researchers like high school interns, because they need technicians, and high school interns are like free work... sorta :P and then you get into it, and can request them to be your mentor and ask them to let you use their lab space for your own research and stuff... and tadaaa :) </p>
<p>math research is just different, because... like you can't really just start you know?</p>
<p>What do high school medical researchers do exactly? And who should I write too and what should I write in the letter?</p>
<p>shouldn't you decide?</p>
<p>Yeah, math focused people really can't do research, only take comps and learn high levels of math. You need so much background for good pure math research its rediculous.</p>
<p>Can't you research a common math problem and possibly create your own proof? Maybe if you do well you can submit it to a journal. If I were you I would talk to a math teacher that you trust and ask him/her.</p>
<p>Teach yourself LaTeX and the problems create themselves. :p</p>
<p>Uh, LaTeX isn't that hard. At least, for me it wasn't.</p>
<p>I've already asked my teacher (he doesn't know anything that high school-ers could do) and I'm teaching myself LaTeX (for Literary Magazine purposes...) andddddddddd i had a great idea.. but i just researched it and found out some grad student did it in 04... pshhhh those grad students...</p>