Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication

The Creative Mathematical Sciences Communication (CMSC) conference series was initiated in 2013 by professor Frances Rosamond, with considerable support from Google. The aim of the conference series is to explore how the foundational ideas and open problems in the mathematical sciences can be communicated to the general public in meaningful ways, especially through active and kinesthetic activities such as those in Computer Science Unplugged!. The CMSC community believes that science communication is a to-way street, and are interested in the technical and scientific research benefits to the computer scientist or mathematician who engages in outreach.

The CMSC has defined three main goals, building on Computer Science Unplugged!:

1. Expand the successful Computer Science Unplugged! activities and materials, with a special focus toward children who tend to not do well with traditional methods, such as Australian Aboriginal, First Nations People of Canada, Latino children from California, and other groups.
2. Popularize and encourage outreach among research mathematicians. Provide a journal with articles that will target an area of mathematical science (for example, statistics, or game theory), and provide an activity to communicate the key concepts (describing how it was received when tried out). Each article will explain the “math vitamins” involved, from the mathematician’s point of view. It will also describe benefits to mathematics research. Sharing research math with children is not just a “feel good” exercise for the research mathematician. There are many examples of new research questions and new approaches that result from the interaction.
3. Lay the groundwork for an innovative research master’s degree program formed by an international consortium, such as Charles Darwin University, Australia; University of California-Santa Cruz; University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

The fourth CMSC was held July 20-23 2018 in Wellington, New Zealand. New Zealand is one of many other countries which include computer science in their curricula. The purpose of the CMSC 2018 is therefore to produce tine more Computer Science Unplugged activities as good as the Sorting Networks.