Joyful Math Night at Lowell Spinners Game
Last year, I attended a Lowell Spinners Minor League baseball game with my family and the new owner of the team had attended to welcome the fans. I had an opportunity to speak with him and we discussed mathematics and the bad reputation that it has within schools. He put me in touch with his marketing team and plans came for me to sponsor a “Joyful Math Night” at the ballpark, which took place last night. The job could not be done alone and so luckily I recruited the passionate educators Dan Williams and Hilary Kreisberg to help with the event, as well as my own children.
We developed a Baseball Statistics Bingo game for everyone to play during the game and each half inning a different baseball statistic was shared on the screen. The lucky Bingo winners were able to redeem a math prize. At our table on the concourse, we had a variety of resources for educators, parents and children including our booklet with information on suggested math books, games, and nonprofit organizations that I support. Please view my handout.
The team allowed us to have three events in between innings to promote joyful math. The first was on the digits of pi. High school math teacher Dan Williams was asked how many digits of pi he knew and playing along, he responded only 3.14. Lesley University Professor Dr. Hilary Kreisberg was then asked how many she knew and extended it by responding 3.1415. What about third grade student Emily? Watch what she was able to do.
Is memorizing the digits of pi “joyful.” In isolation, no it is not. However she had learned it by continuously watching her favorite MwM music video Value of Pi. In addition, the playful idea of a nine year old knowing more digits of pi than trained educators made for good entertainment.
In the next inning, the video board played a few different math music videos for the crowd including the one that was filmed at the Spinners ballpark a few years ago, SOH CAH TOA Style. The other video shared was my favorite one, with an important message; Girls are All About that Math!
Our final event was the sharing with the revolutionary way to understand math, Exploding Dots. Created by Global Math Project founder, James Tanton, we made a contest for the crowd to watch a clip and help first grade student Alexander determine the value of six in a 1 ←2 machine. Watch to see how it unfolded!
It was a fun and exciting night and many people shared that their views on math was beginning to change. It is a good first step, but we still have much work to do! Learn more through my website, Math with Matthew.
