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29th - 30th March 2017, New Delhi, India.
Read the press release by DU Beat here.
Riding on the success and the amazing response received at the inaugural event, the team of MATRIX, this time organized a two-day event for participants to immerse themselves in games and activities around mathematics. While a lot of activities from the last event were repeated at this event, there were a host of other engaging activities that the team put together to provide a new experience to returning participants.
Previous event’s superhit activity - Mathematical Rangoli - had an interesting twist this time. The teams were restricted to using a certain set of shapes and objects as they had to follow the Kolam style of making rangoli. Kolam is an art form prevalent in the southern states of India and in Sri Lanka. Prof. V. Ravichandran, HOD, Department of Mathematics, University of Delhi delivered a powerful talk titled “Let’s discuss math”. The talk was full of humor and anecdotes around the common perception of mathematics in culture and society versus the true essence of why mathematics is crucial for the society to function the way it does.
Other activities spread over the two days of the event were: Tarsia Puzzles, focussing on identifying equivalent expressions of various mathematical terms and objects; Story Board, asking participants to construct original stories and graphics around their favorite mathematical concept and idea; Pentomino Puzzles, a set of distinct polygons made of 5 equal-sized squares connected edge-to-edge which need to be arranged in a specific manner to complete a certain shape; and screening of the movie ‘Hidden Figures’, the story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. Dimension Destination (physical game), Chess Based Games and Poles Apart were repeated from the previous event.
A unique feature of this event was the inclusion of ‘Life-Sized Mathematical Ludo’ and ‘Hope To Hundred’, two life-sized games where players themselves become the token of the gameplay. The event drew its curtains after musical performances and prize distribution ceremony on the second day. “We need more of such events in many other colleges and schools because it’s in schools where children are most haunted by mathematics.” said one of the participants. The organizers would like to thank Math Ed Labs for supporting the event.
