It sings. It dances. It's math?

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By Communications Staff
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Researchers at the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Ontario are taking their “performance math" ideas and practices for a spin across the country with a national math contest for school children.
  
The group has also enlisted the help of some of Canada's top celebrities to be judges -- singers Susan Aglukark and Tracy Bone, Discovery Channel's Jay Ingram, Great Big Sea performer Bob Hallett and novelist-filmmaker Douglas Coupland.
 
The contest, launched by Professor George Gadanidis and his team, asks children and their teachers to share their performances via the Internet. 
 
Imagine a song about triangles, “the scandal about Pi," the Addition Blues, and the strange yarn called "I have 11 fingers." These are some samples already on the website.  
 
Every elementary school in the country will learn this week how teachers and students in grades four to six can enter the Mathfest contest. They will receive posters with contest guidelines in English, French and Inuktitut and learn how they can perform math via webcam, video, picture files or by way of their school's website.   
 
According to Gadanidis, “Math should be accessible and fun. Families should be able to sit around the kitchen table and talk about math as they do with good books, movies or other plot-filled subjects."  
 
Sponsored by the Faculty of Education, the Fields Institute and the Canadian Mathematical Society, the Mathfest contest asks teachers and students to sing, dance or rhyme their submissions for everyone to share.  
 
“I share the excitement of looking at mathematics this way," said Barbara Keyfitz, Director of the Fields Institute. “To look at math through performance is to see its creative, passionate and aesthetic side."
 
Julia O'Sullivan, Dean of the Faculty of Education at Western, speaks of the inclusive nature of the contest.  
 
“We sent the invitation to join the contest to every elementary school from St. John's to Victoria to Grise Fjord in Nunavut because we want all children, wherever they live, whatever languages they speak, to enter what we think is the coolest contest in Canada."
 
Instructions on how to enter as well as some “performance math" examples (such as the 'Addition Blues') are available at www.MathFest.ca. Click on “submissions" for examples of creative math music and theatre.
 

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