Thank you to all the students and teachers who participated in our very first global math art contest! We have now announced the list of finalists as well as the top 3 winners of each age category. All these beautiful graphs are also featured on www.desmos.com/art.

COVID19 has impacted many schools recently. We are extending the deadline to April 30, so more students can participate.

In recent years, we’ve seen a growing number of classrooms around the world doing math art projects using Desmos. These projects involve using various equations and inequalities in our free Graphing Calculator to create some truly impressive pictures, often as a final project for a unit or even for the course.

We’ve been so excited about the beautiful and creative math art that is being produced with Desmos that we wanted to create a space for students from around the world to submit entries and win prizes for their hard work. So this year, we’re running our first-ever Desmos Global Math Art Competition!

Who Can Enter?

Any student aged 13–18 may submit a Desmos graph to the competition via their teacher or a parent. Judging will be based on three age categories:

13–14 years old

15–16 years old

17–18 years old

What Are We Looking For?

Your original art created in the Desmos Graphing Calculator. (Original means that (a) you made it yourself and (b) it doesn’t contain any copyrighted images.)

Want to impress our judges? We’re looking for submissions that have some combination of the following:

Creativity & Originality including:

Visual content

How you use the math you know

Delight. There are lots of ways to show this, such as:

How Does the Judging Happen?

Ten finalists in each of the three age categories will be selected by our in-house panel of judges. All 30 finalists’ graphs will be featured on our website and will then proceed to a final round of judging by a panel of guest judges.

The Prizes:

In each age category, the following prizes will be awarded:

First Prize: $500

Second Prize: $250

Third Prize: $100

All Finalists (including top 3 prize winners):

All 30 finalists, including the top three in each category, will receive:

Desmos T-shirts for the winning student and their teacher

A Desmos-sponsored pizza party (or equivalent) for the entire class

How to Submit Your Entry

Students can submit their entries through the Graphing Calculator on Desmos.com. In addition, teachers can submit in bulk on behalf of their students. Here’s a Google form where teachers and parents can submit entries. Although we will only accept one graph entry per student, our form allows a teacher to upload graphs for multiple students if they desire. All submissions must be made on or before April 30th, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. We will follow up by email with teachers or parents who submit graph entries that are selected to be finalists to ensure that we can properly credit the student.

The Fine Print

All contestants must be ages 13–18. Submit graphs based on the age you will be on May 1.

We have excluded students under the age of 13 from this contest due to various international age restrictions in online privacy laws.

Each entry must be submitted by a responsible adult (teacher or parent), NOT by the student themself.

by the student themself. Each student may only enter one graph in the contest, although the responsible adult may submit multiple students’ entries at the same time.

When submitting, Desmos will collect only the responsible adult’s contact information along with students’ graphs. Prior to announcing any finalists or winners, we will contact the responsible adult of each finalist to determine how to contact and credit the student.

All graph submissions must be created using desmos.com/calculator.

All graphs must be the original work of the student. We cannot accept submissions that include copyrighted images. Specifically, submitted graphs may not include the use of content that is not the intellectual property of the person who made the graph.

Before distributing prizes, we reserve the right to verify students’ eligibility and application information. It is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure their students abide by local data privacy laws.

Resources:

Brand new to graphing with Desmos? Not so new, but want to learn more? Check out any of these links to get started.

Questions? Contact us at contest@desmos.com.

UPDATE

In response to recent questions, we’d like to clarify a few points:

We are accepting international submissions. In fact, we encourage them. While you cannot submit graphs of copyrighted images, you may submit graphs of works that are in the public domain.

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