World Maths Day

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World Maths Day is an annual online global mathematics challenge (known as World Math Day in American English).

It is a celebration of numbers where children from across the globe are united in their aim to answer as many mental arithmetic-based questions as possible. World Maths Day takes place on the 14th of March and is also known as Pi Day because of the 3.14 in American date format. It also happens to be the birthday of Albert Einstein.

It is sponsored by Voyager Expanded Learning, a part of ProQuest Education, a business segment of ProQuest Company, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. together with the Australian e-Learning company 3P Learning.

Contents 1 Accounts 2 Gameplay 3 Results 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Accounts

Teachers from any school around the world can submit information about their class, via email in the form of a Microsoft Excel (.xls) spreadsheet. This information is then processed and the teacher of the class receives an email containing his or her login details. From the admin screen the teacher can print out the "Login Cards" for his or her class. These contain individual login details for each of the class members.

Each account can have its own "Mathelete", which is like an avatar that other players can see when you play. You can alter the hair, skin, eyes, nose etc... of your "Mathelete".

When any of the class members answer a question correctly, the points are added to their individual total, as well as the totals of their class and school.

The different types of account are divided into different ability groups, distinguished by academic year and/or age. The ability groups are displayed as levels; with level 4 being Secondary Education, level 3 being Intermediate Education and so on.

[edit] Gameplay

When beginning a game, the player is shown a map of the world while the system searches for other players (from anywhere across the world). The name, school and country of each player is shown both while searching and during game play. There will be a minimum of two and a maximum of 4 players in each game. Each player will only play against an opponent of the same ability as them. If the system cannot find any other players, the player will enter a game against "The Computer".

Each game is 60 seconds long and the players must answer as many random questions as they can within the time limit. Each game will have questions that all use the same mathematical operator (+,-,×,÷). All the questions have an answer that is below 100 and most questions can be answered within a few seconds.

Each player has three 'lives'. A life is lost after each incorrect answer and if the player reaches 0 lives, they are removed from the game, called a "Strike Out".

[edit] Results

The results from all the games are collated and published in 'Halls of Fame' on the homepage and the main log in screen. These 'Halls of Fame' show the "Highest Individual Contributors", the "Highest School Contributors" and the "Highest Class Contributors". The scores are determined by the amount of questions answered.

There is also a "Question Meter" to the right of the tables that shows the total number of questions answered by everyone taking part. The original target for the (2007) event was 10 million. It soon broken and so the target was raised to 30 million.

As of 18:21 14th March 2007, the total is 25,321,831

As of 18:52 14th March 2007, the total is 27,390,325

The 30,000,000 question mark was broken on 14th March 2007 at 20:32, the 30,000,000th question was answered by Jessica Anne M, St Dorothy's Senior School, Malta

Final total in 2007 was 38,904,275 questions answered correctly.

[edit] References

http://www.voyagerlearning.com/news/pr_12_4_06.jsp

[edit] External links

• Worldmathsday.com
• Worldmathday.com
• 3P learning home page
• Voyager Expanded Learning home page
• Mentioned in Times Educational
• National Centre of Excellence