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 (November 2023)

 

Numbers can tell us where we are, they tell us when, they tell us how much - they let us dig into questions like: how can we use GPS to do earthworks? How do software engineers deal with different timezones? And what's the deal behind property valuation?

On Thursday 30 November, Tūranga hosted the ‘Show Your Working’ speaker event about interesting maths in the workplace addressing these very questions. This was facilitated by local professionals from a range of careers.


Matt Duffy, Senior Product Manager at Trimble Inc, talked about the use of satellites and GNSS to program construction equipment such as bulldozers to make sure they are being used efficiently.

 

Mark Dow, Director of Dow and Associates and teaching fellow at Lincoln University, discussed how property valuation is both an art and a science. Mark showed attendees how maths is utilised to find patterns in recent sales, which can then be used to predict a property’s value.


Josie Smith, Software Developer at Phocas Software, spoke about maths in software engineering, focusing on time zone calculations and how it’s practically impossible to make them always accurate.

 

Plenty of questions were asked in the Q+A session. The audience were invited to stay for refreshments and to further discuss the talks, check out the mathematical book display and the 3D printed mathematical models. We received lots of positive feedback and are keen to run a similar evening of career-based maths talks in the future.

 

The Mathematical 3D printing table at Show Your WorkingThe three speakers on stage. From left Matt Duffy, Mark Dow, Josie Smith.The audience listens attentively to Mark's talk.