The National Mathematics Festival (NMF) was this past weekend on April 16th to April 18th. Organized by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath), the virtual event was completely free with something for all ages. Activities included creating art, songwriting, mathematical games and puzzles, meeting mathematicians and much more!
The NMF provided live online events throughout the weekend—a virtual stage, virtual booths, and sessions. The event was organized and run on Hopin, an online events platform. Although the platform was unfamiliar to most prior to the NMF, Hopin did a great job capturing the essence of a physical math conference.
The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) Math Communities program was one of many organizations that participated in the event. We presented mathematical game activities that involved strategy and problem-solving techniques to master and that were previously featured during our weekly Math Monday sessions. Below you can find the list of activities that we presented, along with more information (for rules, strategies, facilitating the activities, etc.) that we have written on each of them:
Don’t Say 13, Puppies and Kittens, Stack Up, and The Dollar Game were all run in 30-minute sessions, while the Number Guessing Game was run in the booth. We specifically chose the activities for the sessions so that participants could either try them out themselves at their own pace or could join us to solve them together. As for the booth, we wanted to focus less on everyone’s own pace and more about something exciting and “mathemagical” for participants to try and learn. Booths also gave the opportunity for participants to learn more about what we do at AIM Math Communities.
Thank you again to all our volunteers for presenting and leading all of the above activities. The NMF couldn’t have been as successful without all of you!