Things to Bring

The Great Mathematical Bake-Off

Bring a mathematically themed baked goodie, to be judged and shared on Saturday evening. A menger sponge, a Jam pi? Your imagination is the only limit! Take a look at archives from past years for ideas.

Any food not required for judging purposes will be distributed among the MathsJam gathering attendees, so please bring details of any allergens or other ingredients your entry contains so they can be labelled.

Competition Competition

The “competition competition.” Your opportunity to design a competition/puzzle for the other attendees to enter over the course of the weekend. The competition with the most entries wins. You will need to bring:

• Entry forms for the competition,
  • Must be a single sided A5 photocopied sheet, printed black-and-white.
  • It must contain all the information neccessary to participate in your competition.
  • It must have blank space for the entrants to write their name and their answers, this blank space may be the back of the sheet.
  • You must provide at least 25 copies of your entry form.
• An entry box,
  • Sealed container with a slot for completed entry forms.
  • Must be clearly marked which competition it is for.
  • The box must be placed on the Competition Competition table by Saturday lunchtime to make your entry official.
• A prize for the winner of your competition, it must not be worth more than $2.50 on the open market.

As with all competitions, when you submit your entry, you should inform one of the MathsJam organisers so we can mark down who submitted what. However, please leave your Competition Competition entry anonymous.

There will be three prizes for the Competition Competition entries.

• Best competition as chosen by the panel of judges. The panel will be chosen from non-competition-entering MathsJam attendees.
• People's Choice: the competition with the most genuine entries.
• Best attempt at circumvention of the rules while still strictly sticking to the rules. Don't worry, if you are too good at this and we don't notice at all, you might just end up winning the People's Choice category.
• Huba automatically wins the Competition Competition even though he hasn't entered a competition.

Sunday Tables and Display

Sunday Tables is an opportunity to share a mathematical thing you like, whether that be playing a game of set, to teaching someone how to crochet a hyperbolic plane, staging a dialogue from Gödel, Escher, Bach. You may also want to share maths crafts, games, puzzles or models.

There is also an opportunity to display images, diagrams or written information, such as a cool proof, article or problem.

Board Games

We’ll have social time in the “After Math” of Friday and Saturday evenings. You may wish to bring a favourite board or card game to play with other keen gamers.

Other Equipment

When we do maths, sometimes we need props. Here’s a suggested list of things that may come in handy over the course of the weekend:

• Paper, pens, pencils
• Calculator
• Things to make smaller bits of paper out of larger bits, for example scissors
• Things to make larger bits of paper out of smaller bits, for example glue sticks
• Games, puzzles, interesting toys
• Coins, dice, tokens, decks of playing cards
• Calculator
• Straight edge, compass, Euclid himself
• Knitting needles, yarn, string, ribbon
• Calculator
• Spare constants of integration