Participant Testimonials

Feb 27 - Mar 01, 2015

BIRS is such a gem to host guests from out of country. The two weekend conferences that I co-organized at BIRS (Unsolved K-12 and Integer Sequences K-12) have been the top two professional experiences of my life. How influential they will be is still up in the air, but a core group is working to make sure there is a legacy. Today I tried out some of the integer sequences in Kindergarten through grade 6 and will be communicating their successes and failures to the other attendees as we hone in on the final selection of 13 Integer Sequences - one for each grade K-12. The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival was scheduled for immediately after the conference. It was the ideal opportunity to bring this festival to Canada for the first time because I had so many awesome math educators on hand. This festival was a direct side effect of the BIRS weekend. It ended up as the top news story on the Calgary Board of Education web site. That endorsement was unexpected.

Gordon Hamilton MathPickle

Participating in the Integer Sequences K-12 provided me with many interesting mathematical questions, new avenues for finding future problems, and ideas for introducing K-12 students and teachers to beautiful mathematics.

Amanda Serenevy Executive Director
Riverbend Community Math Center

This workshop was very well organized by Gordon Hamilton and co. Some definite progress was made developing examples of integer sequences along with information to teachers about the fit with school curricula as well as background knowledge to support use of the examples and possibilities for extension. The goal is always to get more good mathematics out in front of school age children in an effort to get and keep them engaged.

Robert Woodrow Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary