Reflection of Math (Un)Fair

This is the first time for me to join a math fair as a visitor and see students arrange and design their own games. From my observation, I find that students have more creativity than us, and many games are interesting to play with. I realized that I might underestimate their ability to design and making math games just because of their limitation of math ability. I am surprised that they could manage and run these activities after knowing about the math knowledge. Maybe teachers could work less on "designing" a math game and ask students to make their own games instead. If students could run a good game, it mean they know the content well and has good management and communication skill. Instead of giving them tests, we could assess students by giving them this kind of project and assess them.

However, if we look deep into this activity, a few problems can be observed. Firstly is the competition issue - that is, students will lose their confidence and feel upset if there is not many people play their games and will jealous other students who run popular games. As a result, some students would tell visitors that the game run by the other student is "rubbish", and this may result students argue or fight. Another issue is that although we could see them tried their best to make different games, it is always involves dice or roulette to make their activity looks "fun". Games with roulette and dice is usually about the topic probabilities. I would expect students to make more activities in different topics in math. And it is teachers role to tell them not limited to probabilities, other topics in math are also fun and can be played with.