ICMS Pi-ku Competition

Please note: the deadline has been extended to 14 October!

For this year’s Maths Week Scotland, ICMS is offering the chance to win a personal maths workshop for school classes S1-3, with maths communicators Katie Steckles and Ben Sparks.

The competition:

Write a pi-ku! A pi-ku is a poem that takes the form of a haiku, but instead of the usual 5-7-5 haiku pattern, the syllables in a Pi-ku per line follow the number of digits of Pi 3-1-4-1-5-9 (Pi to five decimal places: 3.14159).

Your pi-ku should be about the beauty and magic of maths!

Here's an example of a three line Pi-ku, following the first three digits of Pi:

(3) Maths ma-gic
(1) How?
(4) Maths Week Scot-land!

>> check out more Pi-ku examples

The prize:

Magic and maths have gone together for hundreds of years. The reasoning behind many magic effects is inherently mathematical and logical, and mathematical tools can reveal the secrets if you’re brave enough to use them.

The session you can win will cover topics in maths that aren’t usually part of the school curriculum, and some which you’d normally only meet if you study maths at university - but the problems will be accessible to students with the level of knowledge they currently have. The workshop will be suitable for S1-S3 students and can run to fit inside a one-hour lesson (if online) or a two-hour session (if in-person).

Workshops will be delivered either online via Zoom or in-person, depending on logistics and location of winners.

Workshops will be available Wednesday 2 - Friday 4 Nov.

Pi-ku submissions can be typed, hand written, or presented using other mediums.

How to enter:

• Open to S1 to S3 groups
• Your school must be registered on the Maths Week Scotland website.
• Complete the submission form linked below, including up to 5 files (one file could be a photograph of several poems for example)
• Deadline for entry: Friday 14 October