{"id":1627,"date":"2016-03-24T09:52:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T13:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=1627"},"modified":"2016-03-24T09:52:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T13:52:23","slug":"math-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2016\/03\/24\/math-tea\/","title":{"rendered":"Math Tea"},"content":{"rendered":"

My school has a longstanding tradition of a weekly math tea. And unlike other places I’ve been, where this time is a social hour before a seminar, at Hood it’s a time to play games, solve puzzles, or do some interesting math with students and faculty. When we divvied up departmental duties at the beginning of the year, I ended up as Math Tea co-czar (that’s the official title), and it’s ended up being one of the most fun parts of my week.<\/p>\n

Each week, we choose some kind of activity. We’ve built up a pretty impressive of activities and games over the years, many of which are detailed on by our own Betty Mayfield on the MAA’s “Math Club in a Box” site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"20151028_163854<\/a>

Our annual math pumpkin carving day. Carving done by student Justin, pumpkin gutting done by the author.<\/p><\/div>\n

We have a shelf of games and puzzles, some of a mathematical bent like Set or Rush Hour, but some are just fun card games. We’ve also cribbed a few activities from the book Solve This: Math Activities for Students and Clubs<\/a>, like one on cutting modified M\u00f6bius strips, and another on doing math on the surface of a donut (with the real thing for a snack, and a papercraft model<\/a> for experimenting).<\/p>\n

\"Bewildered<\/a>

Bewildered by cutting weird M\u00f6bius-like constructions<\/p><\/div>\n

My favorite activities just explore whatever interesting topic I’ve found on the internet recently. Last week I’d seen Buffon’s Needle<\/a> flying around, so we gave it a shot.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A small-scale test<\/p><\/div>\n

\"2016-03-16<\/a>

Scaling up<\/p><\/div>\n

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The week before, we experimented with drawing 3.5-gons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>

Our department chair’s 3.5-gon.<\/p><\/div>\n

And a while before that, we tried to figure out why coin flip probabilities are so frustratingly counterintuitive<\/a>. I’m not sure we really resolved that one to everyone’s satisfaction, but it was fun to collect data.<\/p>\n

The best part about our math tea is that the whole department comes, and we take care not to dominate the discussion. I think it’s incredibly helpful for students to see how professors approach difficult problems, particularly that we rarely know how to solve things immediately.<\/p>\n

This takes very little time to put together, and it’s a valued part of our week. Since we do it in a public area of our building, I think it also gives our department visibility and makes us look fun, which probably helps attract new math majors. If you’d like to help develop a stronger sense of community with your department and your majors, I recommend starting a math tea.<\/p>\n

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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My school has a longstanding tradition of a weekly math tea. And unlike other places I’ve been, where this time is a social hour before a seminar, at Hood it’s a time to play games, solve puzzles, or do some … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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