The “Virtual Mentor” is a long running newsletter series written Ann Sweeney, a Mathematics Professor at St. Catherine University. A full archive can be found here.
March, 2014
Happy March! Although it is traditionally Minnesota’s snowiest month, I’m buoyed because I know that April is coming. Besides spring, I always look forward to April because it is Mathematics Awareness Month (MAM). Each April the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics (JPBM) sponsors MAM. The JPBM is a collaborative effort of the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematics Association of American and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. They started MAM to increase the public’s understanding and appreciation for math. It actually started as Mathematics Awareness Week in 1986.
Every year the JPBM picks a theme, designs a cool poster, offers suggestions on activities, and has a list of resources. This year’s theme is Mathematics, Magic and Mystery. The theme comes from the title of a 1956 book by Martin Gardner. Each day during the month an activity will be made available that matches one of the images on the poster. Since the activities, videos, etc. aren’t available until April, I don’t know what they will be. Based on activities that have been featured in the past, they will probably be suitable for high school and college students and excellent interesting ones.
That certainly doesn’t mean that our K – 8 students shouldn’t participate. You can easily have a set of puzzles, poems, interesting problems, games, etc. that you give to your students, one each day during April. You can award the Math Awareness Crown to the students who solve the most correctly, with small prizes for those who get each day’s answer correct.
Enjoy MAM and use it to have fun with your students while they and their parents become more aware of and appreciative of math.
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