Math Festival Facilitators
Saturday, May 8th, 2021 from 9:30am – 11am
A math festival is a fun, inclusive, and non-competitive event for Monterey County students in grades 6 – 12. Students will dive into different activities at different (virtual) tables. Students choose what activities they want to engage in and then work collaboratively on the tasks with a facilitator.
Schedule
9:30am – 9:45am Festival Start and Welcome
9:45am – 10:05am Breakout Session # 1
10:05am – 10:25am Breakout Session # 2
10:25am – 10:50am Breakout Session # 3
10:50am – 11:00am Closing
Activities
Gerrymandering
Facilitators: Jennifer Elemen, Sumita Jaggar, Eric Painter
Is it possible to influence an election without changing the votes themselves? What if you changed the way the votes were counted?
StackUp
Facilitators: Rod Garcia, Edi Porter
A block can jump as far as the number on top of it. When a block lands on another, its numbers add together and they make a bigger stack. Can you get all the blocks into a single stack?
Parable of the Polygons
Facilitators: Denis Kombe, Alison Lynch
Triangles and Squares live together in neighborhoods. However, the Polygons all believe two things: “I am unhappy if fewer than 1/3 of my immediate neighbors are like me.” & “I am unhappy if I have no immediate neighbors.” What happens as the neighbor grows, and how is it impacted by these seemingly minor biases.
The Dollar Game
Facilitators: Angela Meeker, Suzanne Damm, Kevin Deutsch
Imagine there is a group of people where everyone in the group has either a certain amount of dollars in their pocket or they are in debt (i.e. having a negative amount of dollars in their pocket). Each person is represented by a node (or circle) with either a positive number representing the amount of money they have in their pocket or a negative number representing the amount they are in debt. Can they work together to get everyone out of debt?
Magic Squares
Facilitators: Suzanne Ebrahimian, June Trachsel
Your goal is to place the numbers 1-9 in a 3×3 grid so each row, column, and diagonal add to the same magic number. Can you find what the magic number is?
Skyscrapers
Facilitators: Jordan Johnson, Jennifer Clinkenbeard, Will Franzell
Build cities of skyscrapers – with increasingly challenging constraints!