2024 Session details

Over the past few years I’ve been running a project on math sonification in collaboration with multimedia artists, programmers and mathematicians. This project involves three overlapping branches:

• Development of mathematical games (applets) allowing sound exploration
• Algorithmic musical composition (and live coding)
• Communication of mathematics to visually impaired and blind people.

I will show an example of each of these branches and discuss some questions about the scope of this ongoing project.

In recent partnership with University of São Paulo, we created new interactive objects and exhibited them a the Oxford Maths Festival. One of the goals of this was to create new pieces that were connected to our current research and our colleagues at King’s College London. In particular, our “Consensus” piece showcases a coordination problem between AIs. We have a few publications in the area, but the problem shown in this piece is open. We would like to discuss the benefits we identified in creating objects that depict open problems or current work rather than finished and set-in-stone results. We believe there is value in encouraging both students and colleagues with interesting and challenging new problems, as well as collaborating internationally.

Mathematics and Music have many aspects in common and often music is a good entry point for communicating interesting mathematical concepts. The GrooveLab project grew out of the desire to have a rhythm generator based on mathematical concepts. It was developed as a collaboration of experts in math visualisation, music theory, and groove pedagogics. It can create very realistic groove patterns, and at the same time serves as a tool for rhythm composition, musical experiments, math explanations and as a musical instrument for performances. Technically it is based on the Cinderella/CindyJS framework and available as browser based application. The presentation will give a brief insight into the project, and most of all give demos showing the various aspects and capabilities of GrooveLab.

Since ancient times, humans have been fascinated by shapes and structures, but looks can be deceiving! This year the Maths Outreach Team and College of Science and Engineering Engagement Team at the University of Edinburgh teamed up to develop a free-entry exhibition hosted by a local public arts venue, which challenged the general public to consider the difference between how things really look, and how we might perceive them. Running from 30 March until 26 May, the exhibit was an exploration of optical illusions and higher-dimensional spaces and I'll talk about the challenges and successes we faced along the way.

The MuMa Museum of Mathematics actively strives to include children with diverse needs, including those who are visually impaired and disabled, mainly with Autism, Asperger, Down Syndrome etc., in the world of mathematics. In our presentation, we will showcase a variety of initiatives we have undertaken thanks to which we will be able to project the exposition intended to all children, regardless of their abilities. We will also discuss how MuMa Project individualized edutaiment approaches break down educational barriers and demonstrate that mathematics is a field open to everyone. Our efforts emphasize the importance of building an environment where every child has equal opportunities to develop their mathematical skills.

Abstract artists reach balance and beauty by combining elementary geometric ingredients. How much of this balance can be recreated collectively?

In this collaborative exploratory project, visitors provided over 20000 drawings that were shaped into collective art pieces and morphed into music by three different composers.

As someone who works full time surrounded by hands-on mathematical puzzles in MathsCity Leeds, it can be easy to take the thrill and excitement of completing a good puzzle for granted. In this lightning talk I will be detailing a recent project at Green Man festival in Wales which combined some of my favourite geometric puzzles with brain scanning equipment from the University of Cambridge’s Neuro Optics Lab, as well as the new perspectives it gave me. This talk will focus on bringing mathematics into festivals, the neuroscience of puzzling, and the power of interdisciplinary outreach.

In the City of Rijeka, we have developed and created contents that aim to increase the interest of children and young people in STEM areas and built and equipped two new locations for education in STEM. The park has several original elements that allow the implementation of many activities that illustrate mathematical concepts.

MuMa (Museum of Mathematics) is a project meant to bring the topic of mathematics closer to the Polish society in a creative, experimental way, to present the role of mathematics in the contemporary world and in the description of various phenomena, its meaning in the development of other disciplines, and to promote mathematics and its applications.

It is conceived as an innovative, cultural institution which - following the examples of other top scientific centres - will support teachers in the process of introducing new, non-standard methods of teaching offering training and tuition and will make the whole society acquainted with the evolving, creative and esthetic nature of mathematics. The talk will be focused on presenting the project, its foundations and current activities.

At the Seattle Universal Math Museum (SUMM), we interact with the public at pop-up and outreach events. These venues provide an informal cycle of testing and feedback as we develop exhibits. SUMM’s design team is currently working to establish rich activities inspired by some dissection puzzles introduced by Henry Dudeney (1907) and proven to always have hinged solutions by Eric Demaine et al (2007). Through observation, refinement and iteration we seek to answer questions like: Do activities engage all ages? Can people start exploring (the mathematics) without instruction? What creative (or unanticipated) ways are people engaging?

Pi Day (March 14) is important at MIT. At the Museum, we invite the public into this celebration of math. Many, especially those from groups underrepresented in mathematics, internalize early that math is “not for them.” To counter this, we aim not just to engage visitors with math, but to situate them as active participants in a mathematical community.

Activities centered on collaboration include: a collective toothpick toss inspired by Buffon’s needle, a communally-created pi tapestry, a display of mathematical self-portraits, and an open-mic and communal pi recitation.

If we position visitors not as observers, but rather as co-creators and valued contributors, perhaps they will be empowered to foster those seeds–those math concepts encountered at the Museum–so they continue to grow.

We explore the potential of inclusive experiments in science centers and how they can enrich all visitors. Therefore we will look at some examples of experiments at the Mathematikum that have been further developed for visually impaired people.

During the past semester (January - May, 2024), a colleague and myself, offered a data visualization course based on the principles of computer graphics. The experience was a first for us, and we think it is worth sharing what we learned on the following topics:

1. The use of selected datasets on relevant subjects like security, transportation, gender, climate change, and other social issues.
2. The use of AI by the students for the enhancement of the learning progress on new programming languages.

We would like to share the students' perceptions on these topics at the end of the course and some examples of the work accomplished in the course.

In our presentation, we will highlight the role of our museum, CUBOID, in Kyiv, and explore the unique challenges of studying mathematics during wartime.

On June 12 2024 a novel maths event connected children in Dublin and New York through a maths activity. The New York–Dublin Portal, also known as The Portal, is an interactive installation created by Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys. It allows people in New York City and Dublin to connect through two live streaming video screens (without audio) fostering real-time interaction and global interconnectedness. The Dublin Portal is facing the Spire on O’Connell Street in the centre of Dublin. The New York Portal is on Public Plaza at 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue and Broadway next to the Flatiron Building.

The idea was dreamt up by Eoin Gill of Maths Week Ireland in conversation with Cindy Lawrence of Museum of Maths Manhattan. Chaim Goodman Strauss of MoMath and Franz Schlindwein of Izak9 helped design the activity.

This talk will recount the development and execution of the project, discuss the maths activities used, the reaction of the children and the public and the challenges involved in working in the public space. The speakers will speculate on the potential of such meetups also suggest how such a project could be replicated elsewhere.

My passion for the last 20 years has been creating mathematical art. I will discuss how I became interested in mathematical art, venues for exhibitions, and how art can communicate mathematics. Art has the power to communicate abstract ideas that transcends written or spoken languages. A great aspect of mathematical art is the low threshold for engagement. One does not need a PhD in mathematics to appreciate much mathematical art. Thus, there is great potential in reaching historically marginalized groups and widen the scope of what is seen as mathematics and who can do mathematics. I want everyone to see mathematics in their lives.

“Mathe im Advent“ is a popular online game for students from grades 2 through 10, with yearly >190.000 participants. It uses the beloved German Christmas tradition of the ‘Advent Calendar’ to show all kids, especially girls (>50% part.), who are at odds with mathematics, that it can be fun and very useful in everyday life. The daily exercises are little stories about the elves and their life on the North Pole. They are designed to foster important mathematical competences like problem solving, pattern recognition, logic, algorithmic and strategic thinking.

Since 2008, the youngsters get in touch with modern mathematics and interdisciplinary applications – many areas which they normally never discover within the school curriculum. This way, it’s also a huge science communication project.

In this lightning talk Sam Hansen will introduce a series of four mathematics communication lessons they have developed for the Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation. The lessons were created as a training series for mathematicians with the goal of helping them become better communicators for all audiences, technical to general, with a focus on levering storytelling techniques for better engagement. The talk will also feature reflections on what it has been like leading trainings using these lessons and future directions, including a larger mathematics communication curriculum.

Mathematics can be unruly, especially with notebook paper. Rather than "reading between the lines," we’ll explore what lies beyond them.

Breaking free from the ordinary, we will design notebook paper that moves beyond straight lines by using mathematical equations to craft visually captivating pages. This unruly notebook paper serves as a canvas for experimenting with the vast array of functions in mathematics. We'll also share resources in Desmos and Python, enabling you to create personalized mathematical notebooks.

The TdMfSS ("Tag der Mathematik für Schülerinnen und Schüler") is a yearly team-based fun-filled math-experience-day for 5th-10th-graders at the Technical University of Munich. It aims on the joy of doing mathematics and finding friends rather than on being the best. It is therefore naturally open for diversity and inclusion - without putting particular emphasis on this. The TdMfSS is a co-production of a highschool-teacher and a University-member both being very committed.

The talk will provide a brief instruction-guideline on how to organize such a day reaching quite a huge group of pupils with comparable little effort. It is meant as an invitation to be organized at other places. Questions welcome.

This will be a Happening accompanied by a talk for all ages where the participants place regular polygons that do not tesselate the Euclidian plane. The goal is to simulate a cell growth process similar to the Eden Model. The model is simple, we will start with a single polygon and the goal is to create a random geometric structure that will grow as new polygons are attached. The only two rules are that the new polygon has to share a side with any other polygon already in place and that there cannot be overlaps. We will compare topological and geometric properties with computer-simulated samples such as the one depicted below. This is based on joint work with Claudia Silva and Rosemberg Toala-Enriquez and is co-produced with DESFOGA.

SAMI mathscamps started in Kenya in 2011 and have since then spread over many countries thanks to the initiative and persistence of local teams of mathematicians, supported by the charity SAMI for the logistic and by the energy of international volunteers. These mathscamps are an example of sustainable scalable models of fun maths engagement promoting problem solving and critical thinking in under resourced environments. Kids and volunteers usually don’t want to leave at the end of the camp!