10 Math Modeling Activities to Try in Your Classroom
Looking for ways to bring real-world problem solving into your classroom? Math modeling gives students the opportunity to apply mathematics to real situations, but getting started can sometimes feel overwhelming.
To help, we’ve pulled together a collection of math modeling activities you can use right away. Below is a sample of 10 diverse modules you might want to try with your students.
1. Math for Poets
Explore the connection between mathematics, poetry, and music through rhythm and structure. Students investigate patterns that extend into topics like binary codes and de Bruijn sequences.
Why it matters: Shows how mathematical patterns appear in creative fields like literature and music.
2. Could These Bones Be Amelia Earhart's?
In this module, students create models for predicting human stature from bone lengths. The goal for the development of these models is to determine whether a set of bones found on Nikumaroro Island might be Amelia Earhart's.
Why it matters: Connects math modeling to forensic science and real-world investigation.
3. Competition or Collusion? Game Theory in Sports, Business, and Life
Rock, paper, or scissors? Fastball or curveball? Bluff or fold? Work together or backstab the competition? Game theory offers a computational approach to decision-making in competitive situations between “players” who are each choosing from a variety of possible strategies. This module introduces students to game theory concepts and methods, starting with zero-sum games and then moving on to non-zero-sum games.
Why it matters: Helps students understand strategic thinking in everyday and professional contexts.
4. The Mathematical Theory of Elections
This math modeling activity illustrates how mathematics can design and analyze election and ranking methods. Preference schedules, fairness criteria, and weighted voting all demonstrate that how votes are counted can affect the outcome of an election.
Why it matters: Demonstrates how math influences real-world decision-making and public systems.
5. Math for Drummers
This module presents musical and mathematical topics including musical meter, rhythmic patterns, and their relationship to modular arithmetic.
Why it matters: Reinforces mathematical concepts through music and pattern recognition.
6. I Will if You Will...A Critical Mass Model
This math modeling activity introduces the critical mass model, which is applied to examples in which individuals must decide to cheat or not to cheat, to attend or not to attend, to participate or not participate. Students will see and participate in the process of traveling back and forth between a mathematical model and the real world as they solve problems.
Why it matters: Connects math to social behavior and decision-making in real-world systems.
7. The Mathematics of Focusing a Camera
This module applies precalculus to photography. Using photography as a context, students apply precalculus concepts to understand focal length, aperture (f-stop), and depth of field.
Why it matters: Shows how math directly applies to technology and visual media.
8. Somewhere Within the Rainbow
This module uses Fermat's least-time principle for the path of light to derive the laws of reflection and refraction, and then analyzes the passage of light through a raindrop to explain quantitatively the phenomenon of the rainbow.
Why it matters: Connects mathematics to natural phenomena students encounter every day.
9. The Mathematics of Scuba Diving
In this math modeling module, exponential solutions of differential equations are used to construct decompression schedules for dives of various durations to various depths.
Why it matters: Demonstrates how math is used to solve real-world safety and engineering challenges.
10. Calculus in a Movie Theater
This activity explores the concept of viewing angle as a criterion for determining the best seat in a movie theater. It also addresses the question of the best seat in the theater, converting the layout of the theater from a three-dimensional problem to a two-dimensional one.
Why it matters: Turns an everyday experience into a meaningful optimization problem.
Why Math Modeling Works in the Classroom
Math modeling helps students move beyond memorizing formulas to actually applying mathematics in meaningful ways. By working through open-ended, real-world problems, students build critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills that extend far beyond math class. This blog on how to adapt math modeling for different grade levels may be useful, too!
Did you enjoy these math modeling activities? This is just a small sample of the many modules available through COMAP. Whether you're introducing modeling for the first time or looking to expand your existing lessons, these resources are designed to make real-world math more accessible and engaging for students.
Learn more about our math modeling resources here.
Written by
COMAP
The Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications is an award-winning non-profit organization whose mission is to improve mathematics education for students of all ages. Since 1980, COMAP has worked with teachers, students, and business people to create learning environments where mathematics is used to investigate and model real issues in our world.