Tracy Drinkwater cringes when people – sometimes proudly – announce that they “can’t do math.” He notes that, no one would boast in the same way about not being good at reading or history. But you understand the feeling.
He says math education was designed decades ago to produce NASA engineers, not curious students — evident in the all-or-nothing grading and accelerated curriculum that pushes kids into math before graduating high school.
“It ends up making a lot of people feel really stupid,” Drinkwater said.
So the former middle school and high school teacher set out to change that by creating a playful, exploratory and stress-free math experience.
In 2019, Drinkwater launched the Seattle Universal Math Museum, a program that began as a traveling program that visited classrooms, farmers markets and partnered with organizations such as the Pacific Science Center and the Museum of Aviation. The museum, which goes by the clever acronym SUMM, recently opened its space on March 14 – also known as Pi Day in honor of the mathematical invariant. π.
For his STEM leadership, Drinkwater was honored at the GeekWire Awards as STEM Educator of the Year, along with Fidel Ferrer, founder of Portland’s Project LEDO. First Tech is sponsoring the award, and Drinkwater and Ferrer will be honored at the GeekWire Awards on May 7 at Seattle’s Showbox SoDo.
SUMM filled its space in Kent, Wash., with displays that cleverly inject math concepts into puzzles, games and other activities. The museum has already welcomed 1,000 visitors and will host its first school tour next month. Asking visitors for a $5 donation.
Exhibits include:
A great tool like Sketch requires two people to work together – one controlling the X axis and the other Y – to track patterns such as Seattle’s streets and landmarks. The activity includes concepts including linear equations and the Cartesian plane, making the graph visible through a collaborative drawing challenge.
Motion capture exhibition he turns visitors into living cracked trees. As the participants move their arms, fingers and legs, the camera mirrors and repeats the movement into branching, repeating patterns like cherry blossoms and other trees. Repetition is the essence of fractals, which have real-world applications such as measuring irregular coastlines.
Origami exhibition invites visitors to fold their own paper cup, octagon, picture frame or other multi-dimensional shapes such as cubes or tetrahedrons. Colorful, symmetrical creations are aesthetically pleasing while illustrating 3D shape concepts such as vertices, edges and faces.
Some shows explore little-known math heroes; tessellations, which are patterns made by repeating the same tiles; and a video game that creates Sierpiński triangles.
“We’re trying to provide a place for that kind of fun math that grabs people,” Drinkwater said. If you can spark a child’s enthusiasm for math in a place like SUMM, he adds, the excitement will help them continue with the hard work of school math.
SUMM has 15 employees and one year, rent free space in Kent Station. The nonprofit is supported by donations from individuals and foundations, and is holding a public fundraising event on May 8 in Seattle. It also receives state and King County grants. When SUMM visits schools, it charges sliding fees to ensure access to low-income communities.
“It’s been a really good trip,” Drinkwater said, encouraging people to visit. “And if you want, donate, because funding is the only thing that keeps us going.”
