Coming up...

Join Mathateca at the Festival of Women and Girls in Science banner

Join us at Tūranga from 10am-3pm Saturday 15th February for an inspiring and hands-on STEM festival perfect for scientists aged 5-15 and their whānau.

 

Mathateca will be running our 3D printing exhibition, delivered in collaboration with Christchurch City Libraries.

Watch this space for info about our next events and displays.

 

If you have an idea for something mathsy you'd love to see or collab with us for, let us know! 

You can read what sorts of things we've got up to previously below.

Pi Day: Calculating Pi From Scratch

Calling one-and-all to attempt to calculate as many digits of pi as we can, using nothing but paper and pencil.

Can we beat Matt Parker's 2024 attempt?

On Saturday March 15 2025, number enthusiasts in Christchurch are gathering in the Rātā Building, rooms 222/223, University of Canterbury to try to calculate as many digits of pi as we can by hand. 

If you can do long division (or are willing to learn) then you have the required skills to participate. Come along, and bring your friends!

The event runs between noon - 5pm; turn up anytime.

There will be a short presentation at 1:30pm about pi.

 

Mathateca is proud to support this valiant calculation effort for the 2025 International Day of Mathematics.

Past events

Show Your Working (Aug 2024)

 

Check out this blog post from Christchurch City Libraries staff written to promote our event Show Your Working in association with the Tūranga Speaker Series.

 

On August 8th, our audience got to hear how ecologists use maths to understand ecosystems from Kate Wootton (Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Canterbury) and how Kea Aerospace use mathematics for flight simulation and weather analysis in a joint presentation from Jeremy Hills (Aeronautical Design & Software Engineer) and Sam Walls (Aviation Meteorology Engineer), followed by Q&A.

 

The evening of talks was supplemented with a repeat showing of our Mathematical 3D printing and Slide Rule displays (info on our downloads page).

 

https://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/blogs/post/fascinating-work-and-the-maths-behind-it-thursday-8-august-6pm-to-7pm-mathateca-show-your-working/

 

Audience looks on at three speakers on stage: from left Kate Wooton, Jeremy Hills, Sam Walls. The projector screen behind them reads "there's lots to do!"