A Math Fair is very similar to a Science Fair, except of course the projects revolve around primarily mathematical investigations rather than scientific ones. A Math Fair is a competitive event where students develop a mathematical hypothesis and then test this hypothesis in order to report on their findings to a panel of judges. Students create display boards, and will sometimes also write papers, make models, or short presentations. The judges choose the project they feel best aligns with their judging criteria as the winners, and then those winners typically move on to the next level of competition (ex: regional to state or state to national)
The NCCTM (or North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Math Fair is the one that the two of us have participated in. As we've lived in NC all our lives, this is the only math fair we have experience with and so all of our advice is a result of those experiences. Unfortunately this means it might not all be applicable to your specific situation, so use what helps and leave what doesn't! As always feel free to reach out via the contact form if you have specific questions and we might be able to help!
Outside of being a fun and challenging activity, the math fair has many academic uses including showing dedication to extra curricular learning, to use on applications and resumes, and as a way to gear your education toward your interests outside of school. For more pros and cons when considering participation, see: Pros and Cons of Competing and What Can the Math Fair Do For You.
Typically, the process of getting involved with the math fair is pretty easy. Your school might have a school level fair that you can join, but if they don't (ours didn't) then just googling "math fairs near me" is a good place to start!
Talk to your math teacher, counselor, science teacher, homeroom teacher, or another educator you trust about being your sponsor. Some fairs, such as the NCCTM math fair, require students to have a teacher sponsor in order to enter. Additionally, having a teacher to help you opens the doors to a lot of resources like lab equipment, assistance with content mastery and answering questions, editing, a knowledgeable first audience and more.
For more help drafting, designing and displaying your math fair project, see our handy dandy How-to Guide!
This was my favorite project, and I developed a love for mathematical modeling this year. For this project, I researched SIR models, which help predict how a disease can and will develop, and created models to predict how many people would be susceptible to infection, how many would be infected and how many would recover in a 24-hour period using...
For this project, I developed one of those indexes you read about that determine the "safest towns in America" or the "most innovative schools," in which you take subjective information and apply objective criteria to it to make it measurable. I did a bunch of research to gather and weight sustainability criteria about each of the 50 states, and...
With the benefit of what I learned from my first year in the math fair, I developed a much more complex project in my 6th grade year. Two things made a big difference here: my sister and I ran the school store, so I had all the data readily available, and I had a math tutor, who was earning his...
I did this project with a friend. We both love cats and had cats, and we thought it would be fun to examine how a cat's size affected the height of its jump. We weighed and measured our cats and did a pretty unscientific experiment where we used a laser pointer to get them to jump as high as we...
This was my first math fair project. I decided I wanted to enter the math fair after my sister's experience in kindergarten. I did this project independently, investigating the math behind anamorphic perspective, which is a visual arts technique that requires the viewer to be in a specific location to recognize an image. There are lots of really...