Math Mania

Math Mania is a popular alternative math education event which has been presented in the elementary schools of Victoria, Saanich, Sidney and Sooke since 1997.

It is held three or four times a year. Although we welcome all age levels, it is particularly suited to grade two to five students. Math Mania is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the University of Victoria Site of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences. All students, parents and teachers in the host school are encouraged to attend.

Parents involved in home schooling are also encouraged to come along with their children. Each event usually attracts over two hundred participants.

Math Mania presents a variety of interactive demonstrations, puzzles, games and art such as soap bubbles, 'get your goat' (Monty Hall game), the penny game, the Set Game, the 'Game of 24', kaleidoscopes and hexaflexagons, Nim, Tower of Hanoi, the amazing sorting network and a number of other mathematical puzzles and paradoxes. These activities are designed to demonstrate to children - and their parents - fun ways of learning both math and computer science concepts.

Math Mania is usually presented in a school gymnasium in the early evening, for a period of ninety minutes. Since a Math Mania event requires about twenty volunteers, it requires considerable forward planning. New activities are added each time. Our volunteers, all wearing the coveted Math Mania t-shirt, come from the undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff at the University of Victoria Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

Recently we have added excellent volunteers from nearby St. Michaels University School, a private school. This represents an experiment in using peer instruction and also can serve as a recruiting tool to bring good students into UVic and hopefully, some of them into mathematics.