Before the end of the school year last June, the Newton South High School Math Team hosted its first ever Math Festival, a schoolwide exhibition designed to showcase mathematical inquiry among students. Initiated and organized by Math Team captain Jasper He, and under the guidance and supervision of teacher advisor Mr. Charles Petrizzi, several group members got together to create science-fair style posters presenting a wide range of mathematical concepts, and presented them to others in the cafeteria over the 50-minute Lion Block on Tuesday.

The Math Festival’s program was deliberately broad, covering many areas of mathematics. Some presentations included Joshua Park’s (NSHS ’27) Tower of Hanoi strategy guidelines and some approaches to optimizing it; Edison Xiong’s (NSHS ’27) comprehensive introduction to Julia sets; Jared Mi’s (NSHS ’26) Euler’s Totient Function analysis; Simon Meng’s (NSHS ’27) overview of a Klein bottle (which included a display of a 3-D printed model to illustrate its geometry), and more. They were arranged such that attendees could circulate freely, examine the posters they liked, and engage the presenters in discussion.

The Math Team members took turns presenting their projects to students, and all in the school were invited to attend. The goal of the Math Festival was to reach out to all students, but especially to underprivileged students, where mathematics could be made more accessible for them. The format of informal conversations allowed presenters to answer questions rapidly, offer some ideas they had when researching the topic, and offer some resources for further study into their subjects.

Looking forward, the Math Team intends to make the Math Festival an annual event, expanding its outreach components, with future initiatives including invitations to neighboring Oak Hill and Brown Middle Schools, and collaboration to reach students who may benefit the most from these STEM opportunities, spreading a curiosity for mathematics across the student body.

The posters for the presentation online are available on the Newton South Math Team’s blog: https://nshsmathteam.weebly.com/blog

NewtonSTEM

Message History

Add new keyword