Math is an unusual after school activity but one group of Second and Third graders love it so much that if they finish their homework in class, they ask for more.
The Eugene Math Circle is an after school program hosted by several University of Oregon faculty in the math department on campus that do math problems for fun.
“I have kids who say it’s their favorite activity of the week,” said Maria Nemirovskaya, an instructor at UO and group founder.
A math circle is an informal math club that began in Eastern Europe and started to migrate to the U.S in the 1990’s, according to the National Math Association’s website. Today there are over 190 math circle’s across the nation.
Students from 2nd to 12th grade meet once a week to do math problems, not in preparation for competitions or to tutor for school, but to do math for the love of solving problems. The math taught is different than what is taught in school and in most cases, is more advanced.
“I get to interact with little kids, and these kids are brilliant,“ Dong Rott, a UO undergraduate student who helps at the club, said.
The class is taught in an informal setting with the goal of letting students attempt to figure out problems in their own way. Sometimes the problems may be too hard or too easy, but the group instructors make sure to guide students towards the correct answer.
“Sometimes they swim and sometimes they sink,” Nemirovskaya said.
The group was founded several years ago after Nemirovskaya returned to UO after living in Berkley, California. There she got the chance to teach in the Berkeley and Marin Math Circles for the elementary school students and started the club here in Eugene — something she had wanted to do for a long time.
Unlike a standard school, students are taught why certain equations are used to solve certain problems and the history behind it, Arkady Vaintrob, an Associate Professor in the UO math department said.
“In the typical high school instruction, you’ve be given formulas and say you use those formulas and you don’t know why. It’s none of your business. Here it’s the exact opposite,” Vaintrob said.
The students can be quite curious at times and ask group instructors questions that they may not have anticipated or heard before.
“It happens all the time, they’d asked me something, and I don’t know,” Vaintrob said.
The group has four classes that meet once a week. Two for elementary school students and one for both middle school and high school. The elementary classes are so packed that a student cap had to be placed at 24 for the elementary classes.
“It’s learning and playing with real math. It’s for kids who love math,” Nemirovskaya said.
For more information of the Eugene Math Circle and how to get involved, check out their website here.
Eugene Math Circle for those who love math
Eric Schucht
October 26, 2015
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