Math Fair at West Point Grey Academy

Over the course of this semester, I have participated in five math fairs. In the first four, I was mostly involved in finding interesting math problems, deciding on manipulatives, and posing math problems to students and participants. It was a tiring process.

The fifth fair was at this academy. I was a participant and it was an excellent fair. The hands-on and minds-on activities were mostly centred around data analysis and probability. I wonder how long it would have taken the organizer and the students to design that many different games and activities. I would have never thought that it would be possible to learn about probability and fairness of games through some of the exhibits. It was a joy to see students talking about and demonstrating their mathematical knowledge and understanding. As an observer, I also had an opportunity to witness students' various levels of mathematical interests, effective teamwork, readiness to communicate their mathematical understanding, and creativity.

Throughout, I noticed that students were collecting data during the math fair in order to understand the difference between experimental and theoretical probabilities involved in their games/activities. It was interesting to know that students will be analyzing their data from the fair. Through the analysis of their data, hope they get to understand how probability works in the real-world.