A little Christmas Math

With Christmas rapidly approaching, here are a few ways for those who celebrate the holiday to incorporate some math into it. For example, this site uses the song The Twelve Days of Christmas as a springboard for discussing Triangular Numbers and Pascal’s Triangle. (They also refer to the the Star of David Theorem in Pascal’s Triangle, which I wish I’d found a couple weeks ago!) The site Christmas Math has a the most activities, in addition to facts (e.g. the circumference of the earth and the temperature of the North Pole) that can be used to create your own problems.

Does all this make you want to break into song? Then you can sing “Oh Calculus” to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree (lyrics here), or head over here and sing “Riemann Sums” (Jingle Bells), “Derivatives” (Oh Christmas Tree again) or “Calculus Class” (Silent Night).

Finally, you can check out this video of an AP Calculus class singing some of these songs, with lyric included as subtitles. (It’s initially filmed at an angle, but that is corrected shortly into the program. The songs are in the first 5 minutes.). Happy Singing!

Tags: calculus carols, christmas math