Our website offers lots of free content that can be used for informal learning and enrichment, thinking about careers, and recreation. We invite you to explore our online essays, sample book chapters, Notices issues, podcasts, videos, and more, and share them with your family, friends and colleagues. Here's a tour of just some offerings by and for our wide community across all ages, with top things to do:
1. Read stories about mathematicians
- Living Proof: Stories of Resilience Along the Mathematical Journey is a freely downloadable book of stories about people from diverse backgrounds, who've taken diverse paths. Find inspiration, some common ground and even humor.
- Sample AMS book chapter: "The Firsts," about Dr. Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes, Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville, Dr. Marjorie Lee Browne. This chapter is from Women Who Count, by Shelly M. Jones, an activity book for all readers, especially grades 3-8.
- Take a look at some mathematicians spotlighted in Notices of the AMS to celebrate Black History Month (February), Women's History Month (March), and Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15). Explore each issue for articles by and about these diverse mathematicians.
- Read online feature stories about mathematics research communities, outreach programs, textbook authors, and other news from the AMS community.
2. Learn how mathematicians are helping solve real-world problems
- Math in the Media: See where math is showing up in current events. Sample headlines include "Mathematicians are deploying algorithms to stop gerrymandering," "How Math Solved the Case of the Volcanic Bombs That Didn’t Explode," and "Emmy Noether faced sexism and Nazism – 100 years later her contributions to ring theory still influence modern math." Math in the Media now also includes ideas for classroom activities connecting math concepts to the news!
- Mathematical Moments: Download free PDFs of more than 160 posters on the role math plays in science, nature, technology, and human culture. Many are translated to other languages. Topics include "Securing Data in the Quantum Era," "Taking the 'Temperature' of Languages," "Making Room for Patients," "Fighting Fires," "Mixing Math and Cooking," and many more. Recent Mathematical Moments include video interviews; most others include podcast interviews.
3. Be creative
- Hear Math and Music. The notations of composers and sounds made by musicians are connected to mathematics. Listen to performances and explanations, play an instrument or sing, or compose a piece of your own.
- See stunning artwork on Mathematical Imagery and try your hand at folding origami, making fractals, or creating a geometric sculpture.
- Enjoy and write Math Poetry. Read some AMS Math Poetry Contest winners and then compose your own math limerick, sonnet, or haiku.
- Download free line-drawing and curve-stitching patterns. All you need are color pens or pencils and a ruler, or plastic needles and yarn, to make your own designs!
4. Play games and puzzles
- Try crossword puzzles and a sudoku in Notices of the AMS: "Number One," by Byron Walden; "To the Nth Degree," by Byron Walden; "1, 1, 2, 3, 5, ...," by Ned White; "...demonstrationem mirabilem...," by Ned White; and "Lie Algebra Sudoku," by Ed Dunne.
- Sample AMS book chapters: "Recreational Mathematics," (from Famous Puzzles of Great Mathematicians, by Miodrag S. Petković); "Distribution Dilemmas," (from Solve This: Math Activities for Students and Clubs, by James Tanton); and "Dragons and Poison," (from How Round is a Cube?, by James Tanton).
5. Explore math in business, industry, and government
- BEGIN Careers: Learn about jobs in Business, Entrepreneurship, Government, Industry, and Non-profit sectors, where teamwork, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, and different perspectives are key. Watch interviews where mathematicians discuss using artificial intelligence and data science, biomathematics in the pharmaceutical industry, statistics at Sandia National Laboratories, and predictive models to optimize technology operation in industry.
- Gerrymandering cases are increasing looking to mathematicians for their insights. Mathematicians are working with political scientists to incorporate geometry and computing power to create millions of redistricting schemes for a state and assign measures of irregularity to each scheme. That way proposed redistricting plans can be compared with the computer-generated possibilities and the highly unfair plans will stand out and be rejected.
- Each year our Office of Government Relations invites a mathematician to talk on Capitol Hill about ongoing research that's helping to solve problems. See Congressional Briefings and Exhibitions on cryptography, modeling, nanomaterials, monitoring an electric power system, and more.
6. Learn about an area of math that's new to you
- Explore materials from Open Math Notes, a repository of freely downloadable mathematical works hosted by the AMS as a service to researchers, faculty and students. Open Math Notes include:
- Draft works including course notes, textbooks, and research expositions. These have not been published elsewhere and are subject to revision.
- Items previously published in the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics, a refereed journal
- Refereed publications at the AMS
- Sample AMS book chapters: "Appetizers (Before Calculus)" (from Tactile Learning Activities Using Mathematics, by Julie Barnes and Jessica M. Libertini); "Pascal's Triangle," (from A Mathematical Gallery, by Lisl Gaal); "Calculating on the Back of an Envelope," (from Common Sense Mathematics, by Ethan D. Bolker, Maura B. Mast); "Surprising right triangles," (from Portal through Mathematics: Journey to Advanced Thinking, by O. A. Ivanov); "Combinatorics," (from Math by the Bay: Topics for Grades 1-5, by Laura Givental, Maria Nemirovskaya, Ilya Zakharevich).
- Read online Feature Columns on algebra, calculus and analysis, differential equations, discrete math and combinatorics, game theory and social choice, geometry and topology, history of mathematics, linear algebra, math and nature, math and technology, math and the arts, math and the sciences, and probability and statistics. Browse by topic (see bottom right column), or start with:
- "What is a Prime and Who Decides?" by Courtney R. Gibbons
- "Alan Turing and the Countability of Computable Numbers" by Adam A. Smith
- "Rook Polynomials: A Straight-Forward Problem" by Thomas Morrill
- "The Kalman Filter. Helping Chickens Cross the Road" by David Austin
- "The Origins of Ordinary Least Squares Assumptions" by Sara Stoudt
7. Find your "Collaboration Distance" and Math Genealogy
- Measure the connections between different researchers in the mathematical sciences. If you've published a paper, try MathSciNet's Collaboration Distance tool to see the distance between you and your mentor, student, or a famous mathematician, like Paul Erdős!
- Check out your mathematical ancestors and see the thesis titles of over 255,000 mathematicians in the Mathematics Genealogy Project database.
8. Catch up on Notices of the AMS
- Early Career Collection: Get advice from those who have gone through this stage of research and job-hunting, and who have done service and taught. Thanks to those mentors and others willing to share their experiences!
- Reviews Collection: Here you'll find summaries of books, plays, movies, and other artistic and cultural works involving mathematics.
- Topical Columns Collection: These include Math Outside the Bubble, Short Stories, and Washington Update.