And an update on the monthly DMAM (Dance, Movement Arts and Mathematics) online meeting: next one is Sunday March 15, and you are invited here too

Hi all. Here's a repost from earlier in February about the next DMAM meeting, so that those who might be interested in joining in on the March 15 meeting (10:30 am - noon Vancouver time) can join:

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Hello everyone! A note that Sunday March 15 (update), 10:30 AM- 12 noon Pacific Time, everyone in our class is

invited to join in (with optional participation) in the monthly DMAM (Dance, Mathematics and Movement) international online group! The details, including the Zoom link, are below. Hope that some of us will be able to attend and participate.

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Our next Zoom meeting of the Dance, Movement Arts, and Mathematics group is Sunday, March 15, 10:30 AM PST (California time). 

Last time, Manuela Manetta and Lori Teague who teach Mathematics and Dance respectively at Emory University in Atlanta, presented about their combining of their disciplines in courses at Emory. I found it very inspiring and interesting to see how they were teaching differential equations and other undergraduate-level advanced math topics through dance, with a collaboration between a professor of dance and a professor of math!

At the March 15 meeting, one of the presentations will be by Jenny Ludwigs, a PhD student at Stockholm University in Sweden. Jenny has a background in information technology, web development and engineering as well as in mathematics education, and she also dances ballet as an interest. She will be talking about her in-progress PhD research proposal, that brings together haptics (tangible computer interactions) with math and possibly dance. It's sure to be interesting!


Link for the March 15 meeting is below.


Karl Schaffer writes: For those planning to go to the Bridges Galway Math and Arts Conference this coming summer, DMAM people have been approved to again present a session of short dance and math activities on Bridges Family Day. If you are interested in helping plan this event please get in touch with me. We need to look over applications and plan the approximately two hour event (assuming it will be about the same length as last year's session.)


Topic: DMAM Meeting Sunday, March 15, 2026, 10:30 AM PST (California time)
Time: This is a recurring meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://fhda-edu.zoom.us/j/85347919727?pwd=nVljsKtyIp8S3wp3idAv21hhh2wdLu.1
Meeting ID: 853 4791 9727
Passcode: 332311

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DMAM has an exciting and helpful, always-ongoing, never-completed project: creating a bibliography and filmography of resources around math, movement arts and dance. Here is a link to a pdf of this ever-evolving living document.

Math-Art Manifesto meeting information: You are invited!

An art manifesto from the '80s

 Hi everyone! Following up from our optional Zoom Screenside meeting this morning, here is some information about the Math-Art Manifesto meetings:

Dr. Fumiko Futamura from Southwestern University has let me know that the next Math Art Manifesto Zoom meeting will be Sunday, March 29, from 9:00- 10:30 AM Vancouver time. And everyone in our class is welcome to join in! (I highly recommend it -- it is a fascinating discussion with very interesting people.)

If you are interested in joining, please let me know in the comments to this post! I will then send an email to Fumiko and to everyone in the group who has expressed an interest in joining in, and you can have your email added to the mailing list. 

And if you have already (or are planning to) draft your own math-art manifesto, please feel free to share it (on your blog or in an email), and we can bring these to the meeting of the Math Art Manifesto group if you'd like to! I will likely be sharing the two quickly-drafted Math Art Manifestos from my face-to-face graduate class too, and some of those students may also be attending the meeting (so you can meet!)

Reminder: Our second optional Screenside Zoom chat will be tomorrow (Saturday February 28), from 9:30-10:45 AM Vancouver time

 UPDATE: Here is the link to the recording of our Zoom Screenside chat, for those who couldn't make it or want to review it!

Hello everyone, and hope that you are doing very well as we slowly approach the month of March and the hints of spring in the air!

A reminder that tomorrow morning is our second of three optional Screenside Zoom chats:

Saturday February 28, 9:30 - 10:45 AM (Vancouver time)

Susan Gerofsky 趙書琴 is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: EDCP 553-26 Cohort Optional Screenside Chats

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://ubc.zoom.us/j/68598548876?pwd=Rxzj5uUTMlEWbRXvk6pwwQmCRjUagP.1

Meeting ID: 685 9854 8876

Passcode: 088071

 

Hope to see you there if you're able to make it!

Everyone should have received my feedback on your project outlines and annotated bibliographies by now, and all of these are looking very good as you move forward into your project drafts and then final project submissions.

I am currently in the midst of sending out feedback to everyone on your work so far in the class: your engagement, documentation and reflections around readings, activities and viewings, and your responses to classmates' writing (especially their article-reading responses) in your reading groups. I can see that I will probably not have completed all of these before tomorrow morning's chat, but I will get as many of these to you as possible today!

Looking forward to seeing you soon,

Susan

Week 7: Just for this week, a slightly different format!

 Hello everyone! For just this week's class, we will have a slightly different format from the majority of classes in our course: a recorded interview with a guest speaker, and readings. 

Note that there are no required activities for this week, though you are very much welcomed to try out some aspects of Nick Sayers' mathematical artworks as shown in his interview!

A few days ago, I recorded an interview with mathematical/ STEAM artist, Nick Sayers, coming to us from Brighton in the UK. It's almost two hours long (1:55), and is centred on a slide presentation of Nick's many, ingenious science and mathematical art projects. Here's the link to the interview video.

Nick Sayers brings most of his artwork to public education venues including schools and universities, arts and maker festivals, music fests, and international events. In his talk, he traces the process of designing and developing these math/ art/ science projects, and I think the process may be quite informative for you as you begin to design your own math/ art educational projects.

So for this week's class, please do the following, by Monday March 2 at midnight:

1. Watch the full video, and take some notes on the things that make you think, connect, question, remember and ask questions. It would be helpful to note the time code at each of these, so that you can refer to them in your writing.
2. From these, choose 3 or 4 'stops' to write about in your post on your viewing. 
3. Also, please think about and respond to this question:
   What does this artist's work offer you in terms of understanding math-art connections, and what does it offer you as a math or science teacher?
4. If you have questions you'd like to ask Nick Sayers, please add them at the end of your post.
5. Please let me know if you'd like to share your post and/or your questions with the artist, and I will email him whatever people would like to share. He may be able to respond if he has time!

Readings for this week:

We also have our regular readings for the week, and you should post and respond to your reading group's posts as we usually do!

 

Here are our three readings for this week, centred on the idea of what it means to be a mathematical artist. This is a hot topic in the Bridges Math and Art community at the moment, initiated by the George Hart article (reading #1) from the AMA Notes recently which suggested the idea of a Math/ Art manifesto. (A group of us affiliated with Bridges are working on that and hashing out these big ideas now!)

1. George Hart. (2024). What Can We Say About “Math/Art”?. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 71(4).
   
   
2. Choose one of these two articles: Alison G. Martin. (2015, August). A basketmaker’s approach to structural morphology. In Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia (Vol. 2015, No. 29, pp. 1-8). International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS). 
   
   OR Chronaki et al (2025). Circular movements of healing with maths, arts and craft: Reimagining disciplinary transversals for learning. In Proceedings of MACAS 2025, University of Moncton, NB.
    
3. Fumiko Futamuro. (2025). Writing a mathematical art manifesto. In Bridges 2025 Archive, Eindhoven, NL, 589-594.

Enjoy! And next week we will be back to our usual format (an 'everything' sheet including introduction to the week's topic, short viewings, activity and weekly readings).

Details on expectations for your draft culminating project (due March 9 on your personal blog(s) for our class)

Photo by creditscoregeek.com

 Hello everyone! By now you should all have received feedback from me on your culminating project outlines and annotated bibliographies. I really enjoyed reading about your projects, and I'm impressed by the scope and originality of your ideas!

Most people have now successfully added any revisions or clarifications I requested on some of the outlines (requests sent to you in an email on feedback on your project outline), and I think everyone is ready to carry on to the next phases of the project.

And a PS: I will be sending each of you an email with feedback on all your work in the course so far over the next week!

Here are the expectations for the project draft, which is due Monday March 9 at midnight on your personal blog(s) for our class. (We will also have our next Zoom Screenside Chat session next Saturday, February 28 from 9:30 - 10:45 AM Vancouver time, so you can ask further questions in person there, or by email any time!

• The project draft should be your final project presentation slides, in as complete a form as you can have ready by March 9. 
• I expect that many people will still be at the point of testing out their project activities with students, family, friends and/or neighbours at this point. That's fine! If there is still missing documentation that isn't ready yet, just leave some placeholder slides saying what you plan to add before the final project deadline on March 24 -- for example, a placeholder slide might say, "Video of my class working on their fractal sculpture to be added by March 15", or something similar.
• Your conclusions and suggestions for future development of the project will likely be added after March 9 as well.

Your slides in the project draft should include: 

1. your topic; 
2. the insights gained from your literature review that support and scaffold this new project; 
3. your personal connections and positionality as a researcher and educator with this project; 
4. the details about your proposed implementation of the project, including connections to mathematical thinking and exploration; and 
5. details about how you are planning (or have already completed) a try-out or pilot of your project with other people.

To be added between the March 9 draft project and March 24 completed project:

1. An account (with photos, possibly videos, and commentary) about how your project actually played out when you tried it out with others.
2. Conclusions and suggestions for fellow educators on future development of the project, in light of your reading, thinking, designing and piloting the project for the first time.
3. Any other amendments and insights based on what you learn from class readings, writing and discussions as well as my feedback, between March 9 and 24.

Remember that the final project will be submitted on the class blog, in the form of a video-recorded slide show with your voice(s) doing the presentation. After March 9, I will add a how-to post on our class blog for doing those video recordings in several different ways. (It's not difficult...!)

Cheers

Susan

Week 6: Math, dance, movement and film --Introduction, viewings, activities, readings

  

Hello everyone! Here is the link to this week's resources and activities, mostly focused on teaching mathematics through dance and movement. (Note: Malke Rosenfeld’s website has just disappeared and been replaced by some ecommerce site! I have switched to some different, worthwhile math, dance and movement activities for you to try out and think about!)

Today was the monthly meeting of DMAM: the dance, movement arts and mathematics international online discussion group of people interested in embodied math/ dance and movement. It was another very inspiring session with presentations from people teaching differential equations courses through dance, and dancing their emotions while doing graduate studies in math. If you're interested, the next session will be Sunday March 15, 10:30 - noon Pacific Time.

DMAM has an exciting and helpful, always-ongoing, never-completed project: creating a bibliography and filmography of resources around math, movement arts and dance. Here is a link to a pdf of this ever-evolving living document. 

A clarification on what you are expected to respond to each week

 Hi everyone! I've had some questions about clarifying what you are expected to be responding to each
week in our course together. Here is some detail that I should have made clearer right at the start -- but most of you are already doing what I expect from you!

• Each week, each person in the class needs to post their response to their reading (a brief summary, 2 or 3 'stops', and a question or two), AND also post a documentation and response to their experiments with the weekly activities and viewings. Some people do these as two separate weekly posts, while others choose to combine things in one post.
• For the other two people in the reading group, you are definitely expected to respond to the reading responses of the two other people in your group each week.
  
  
• If you feel moved to do so, you can also respond to your group members' writing about their experiences with the week's activities and viewings. But this is entirely optional!
• Also, if you feel moved to do so, you can respond to people from other reading groups... to their reading responses and activities and viewings responses. This is also entirely optional!

I hope that is helpful! I know that this course is structured slightly differently from some of your other courses in the cohort program, and I hope this offers a good variety of ways to engage with one another and with the course ideas and materials.

Please do get in touch if you have any questions!

An invitation to join in on the Dance, Movement Arts and Mathematics online group this Sunday February 15

Hello everyone! A note that Sunday Feb 15, 10:30 AM- 12 noon Pacific Time, everyone in our class is

invited to join in (with optional participation) in the monthly DMAM (Dance, Mathematics and Movement) international online group! The details, including the Zoom link, are below. Hope that some of us will be able to attend and participate.

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Our next Zoom meeting of the Dance, Movement Arts, and Mathematics group is Sunday, Feb. 15, 10:30 AM PST (California time). Manuela Manetta and Lori Teague who teach Mathematics and Dance respectively at Emory University in Atlanta have offered to present about their combining of their disciplines in courses at Emory.


Link for the Feb. 15th meeting is below.


At the last meeting last month Scott Kim gave an introduction to how to draw hypercubes in the plane as an introduction to a large string figure of a 4D hypercuve we plan to create at the Gathering for Gardner conference in San Francisco this month. Also January Wolodarsky introduced us to Tuedon Ariri and Arthur Morel Van Hyfte who pesented about their acrobatic dance company's beautiful performance work. For those who could not make it the last meeting Tuedon has sent us this link to their slides from their presentation.

For those planning to go to the Bridges Galway Math and Arts Conference this coming summer we have been approved to again present a session of short dance and math activities on Bridges Family Day. If you are interested in helping plan this event please get in touch with me. We need to look over applications and plan the approximately two hour event (assuming it will be about the same length as last year's session.)


Karl Schaffer


Topic: DMAM Meeting Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026, 10:30 AM PST (California time)
Time: This is a recurring meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://fhda-edu.zoom.us/j/85347919727?pwd=nVljsKtyIp8S3wp3idAv21hhh2wdLu.1
Meeting ID: 853 4791 9727
Passcode: 332311

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DMAM has an exciting and helpful, always-ongoing, never-completed project: creating a bibliography and filmography of resources around math, movement arts and dance. Here is a link to a pdf of this ever-evolving living document.

Week 5 Introduction, viewings, readings & activities: Integrating embodied, arts-based and outdoor math activities in mathematical inquiry

Hello everyone! Here is the link to this week's sheet with the introduction, viewings, readings and activities for you to try.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas as you engage with this important topic!

Cheers
Susan

How to submit your project outline & annotated bibliography

 

Hello everyone! Here are instructions on how to submit your annotated bibliography and brief project outline (title, name(s) of those working on it, short description of you topic and how you plan to research, design and try out your ideas):

You should post these on your personal blog for the course by midnight Monday February 9.

If you are working with a partner, both of you should post (the same) outline and annotated bibliography on your individual blogs.

Looking forward to reading about your exciting project ideas, and giving you some feedback to help guide next steps!

An interesting *free* online (of course, optional) session from MoMATH, NYC March 2: Juggling and math!

Dear MoMath friends, 

MoMath’s 2025–2026 Visiting Professor Dr. Arthur Benjamin curates a monthly dive into the many ways mathematics inspires — and hides inside — film, theater, music, magic, juggling, and more. Each session features an hour-long conversation with Art and special guests. Some months you’ll watch the selected movie or performance on your own, then join a lively discussion; other months the performer will appear live, ready to share insights and answer questions.

Discover how creative minds weave math into stories, staging, and spectacle, and leave with fresh ways to see the connections between performance and mathematics.

Join Visiting Professor Dr. Arthur Benjamin for an evening of Starring Math, featuring Mathematics and Juggling

with Colin Wright — on Monday, March 2, from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm ET (online).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZMR2h93X0k

Note that this will be 3:30-4:30 Pacific Time!

No advance viewing is necessary for this special Starring Math session.

Register for free at momath.org/starring.

Regards,
National Museum of MathematicsView upcoming events at momath.org/calendar
Support MoMath at momath.org/contribute
(212) 542-0566

225 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
United States

Week 4: Mathematics and the arts introduction -- resources, readings, viewing, activity*

 

Here is the link to our Week 4 resources, readings, viewing and activity (all on one sheet). Hope you enjoy it! 

**Addition: Here is the description of the activity for this week.  I realize that I must not have explained it clearly enough -- so here is my attempt to clarify!

(From this week's sheet:)

"The Bridges Math and Art conference has a gallery of mathematical art each year. The galleries from the 2010 to the 2025 Bridges conferences are linked here. Your task this week is to look at the art works from the Bridges conference assigned to you (see list below), and for each person to choose a different art work to look closely at, understand as deeply as you can, and to try to replicate in some way -- by sketching, building, weaving, sewing, beading or otherwise re-making a replica of the artwork. The aim of the replication is to gain a deeper understanding of the connection between the mathematics and the art -- so you will certainly not be judged on your abilities to make the art, but only on the connections you make between the artwork and the mathematical ideas and patterns!

You will notice that some of the art pieces use mathematics that is accessible and familiar, and others use more esoteric mathematics. Be sure to choose an art piece where you can understand the math fairly clearly! At the same time, try to stretch yourself just a bit beyond the familiar too. The artists' statements will help you see the mathematics (and you can even try emailing the artists to ask them more about their pieces, if you have time)."

(Further clarification, I hope):

This means that, for this week's activity, each person should choose one work of mathematical art from the online Bridges art gallery you have been assigned.  Choose something that appeals to you and seems accessible to you.

Take a look at the image of the art piece and at the artist's statement, which should explain a bit about the mathematics and the artwork. Think about it, and take a try at copying the artwork to get some understanding of it 'from the inside'. Note that I don't expect you to reproduce the piece of art exactly, but just to try making or sketching it in a roughed-in way, with the aim of understanding what it is and how it was designed using mathematics.

That is the activity for this week! 

(For further clarification, please check out the film  New math teachers riff on Kandinsky in Binary,  an account of a group of three teacher candidates doing a similar exercise, with more time and in more depth, in relation to a Bridges 2016 work of art by Marc and Marion Chamberland.)

A note on your reading groups

 Hi everyone! A little note on your reading groups:

Here are the groups as they've been from the beginning of the course:

Tentative reading groups for the first half of the course (as close as possible time zones...):

i. Amanda Wheeler (Comox), Nichola Williams (Nanaimo), Fiona Wood (Fraser Lake)

ii. Sukie Liu (Richmond), Oliver Podwysocki (Port Moody), Sunny Hu (Vancouver)

iii. Kristie McClellan (Kelowna), Mel Lunde (Kelowna), Vannessa Smythe (Midway)

iv. Kristie Truell (Richmond), Jeanette Ostrom (Delta), Colleen Kanigan (Winlaw)

v. Nicole Fulton (Cranbrook), Everett Yee (Calgary), Melanie Breckon (Saskatoon)

vi. Tracy Parkes (Eriksdale, MB), Katelyn Martin (Winnipeg), Raymond Sosa (Edmonton),

vii. Taylor Faille (Ormstown, PQ), Noémie Deschênes (Schefferville, PQ), Colleen Nicholl (Halifax), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Toronto) (Four people in this group!)

We will keep these same reading groups for this week (Week 4), and then switch next Tuesday, February 9 to our reshuffled reading groups for Weeks 5-9 (there are no reading responses for the final Week 10 of the course):

Reading groups for Weeks 5 - 9 (Feb. 9 to end of course):

A. Amanda Wheeler, Sukie Liu, Kristie McClellan

B. Kristie Truell, Nicole Fulton, Tracy Parkes, Sunny Hu (Four people in this group!)

C. Taylor Faille, Nichola Williams, Oliver Podwysocki

D. Mel Lunde, Jeanette Ostrom, Everett Yee

E. Katelyn Martin, Noémie Deschênes, Fiona Wood

F. Colleen Nicholl, Raymond Sosa, Melanie Breckon

G. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Colleen Kanigan, Vannessa Smythe

Note that each time, we have one group of four people!

And don't forget: each week, you should respond once (at least) to everyone in your group on their blog. So if you're in a group of four, remember to read and respond to the other three people... 

If you would like to respond to others who are not part of your reading group, that is also absolutely fine, though not required!

Your blog writing has been so interesting and thoughtful -- full of very original ideas and connections! Keep up the great work, everybody! What a great group.