A great way to exercise your math skills in your free time is by making math fun! Staying on top of your math practice can be hard if you don’t find it interesting. From puzzles to crafts, so many fun activities involve mathematics. Take up one of these hobbies to have fun while practicing the skills you learn in class and improve your handling of numbers and logic!
Puzzle Games that Make Math Interesting
Games are perfect for making math fun! “Gamified” math practice in-itself can make students more invested in math practice, but there are many games that involve math in a less obvious way. Here are some math puzzles and games that include math-related thinking, perfect for students who want a new game to exercise their brain!
Chess
Chess is a strategy game that has captivated minds for hundreds of years. Involving an 8×8 game board and two opposing sets of 16 pieces, where each type of piece has its own rules of movement, the goal is to “checkmate” your opponent’s king; that is, to capture that piece so that it cannot escape.
The quintessential puzzle game, chess involves mathematical concepts in numerous ways, from the geometric structures of chess pieces mid-game to game theory, concerned with finding the most optimal next move. Even without considering the mathematical concepts behind chess, playing the game in-itself can strengthen your “mathematical thinking”. The process of analyzing your opponent’s move and figuring out how to best attack with your pieces, all while defending your king—well, that’s a logic problem in disguise!
Even if you don’t have access to a chess set or a willing opponent, you can still enjoy the marvels of this masterful game. Chess.com is widely considered to be the best online resource for playing and learning about chess, matching you with opponents from around the world and providing customizable training bots to improve your skills.
Sudoku
Uninterested in a board game like chess but still want a challenging puzzle? Sudoku may be the move! The goal is to fill up a 9×9 grid made up of smaller 3×3 grids with all the digits from 1 to 9—without repeating a digit in the same row, column, or 3×3 box. So, by the end, each row, column, and mini 3×3 grid will each have one of each number.
A Sudoku is typically presented with several clues; that is, pre-filled numbers in several cells. Using those clues, you must decipher which digits to insert in which spots. While chess is known for having many possible solutions, an individual Sudoku typically has one final solution. Deciphering that solution exercises your ability to work with groups of numbers and arrays—fundamental concepts that’ll help students of any grade get more comfortable with numbers and math.
Like chess, mathematicians throughout history have explored many mathematical topics through Sudoku. Solving questions like, “What is the maximum number of unique Sudoku solutions?” or “Can Sudoku grids be symmetric?”, involves group theory (which studies the concept of grouping in algebra) and combinatorics (which involves the mathematics of counting). Try your hand at these queries before looking up the solutions!
Sudokus and Related Resources
- Sudoku.com or Websudoku for tons of puzzles at different difficulties.
- NYT Sudoku for a daily easy/medium/hard Sudoku.
- CrackingTheCryptic for fun Sudoku and learning behind the puzzle.
- Sudokumaker.app to make your own puzzle!
Card Games
There’s a reason many probability word problems involve a standard deck of 52 cards. There are so many ways you can arrange a deck of cards, which is why there are so many card games out there! Each of these games uses math in its own way, discreetly making math fun and competitive. (This makes them especially useful for math teachers looking for ways to excite the classroom!)
Go Fish!
The main areas of math practiced during Go Fish!, the gold standard when it comes to playground card games, are counting and probability. The goal of this group game is to acquire as many matches of four cards (or “books”) as possible.
With the knowledge that there are four copies of each rank, you can use the cards in your hand and the ranks your opponents have requested to hypothesize the best way to get more books. Say that you have a pair in your hand and an opponent asks a different player for a card of that rank. You’ll know that they have at least one card of that rank, so you can request it from them when it’s your turn to “go fishing” as a guaranteed way to get at least one copy of that card.
Teachers, consider doing a class-wide Go Fish! activity. Elementary and middle school classrooms will enjoy “Addition Go Fish!”, where books are formed by gathering cards that add up to a certain value. Algebra classes will find “Radical Go Fish!” an exciting illustration of the process of reducing radicals.
Blackjack or “Twenty-One”
We at Piqosity do NOT promote gambling—but Blackjack is too math-y to pass up in this look at making math fun with card games! Avoid gambling by using point values instead of money or coins/tokens.
The surface-level math practice in Blackjack is obvious and effective. Players have to continuously add the values in their hands to reach 21 without going over 21. As a game goes on, players who are able to mathematically keep track of cards from early rounds are in a better position to win, rewarding counting and memory skills.
Of course, probability is a huge aspect of Blackjack. Let’s say your cards total a score of 18. Whether it’s worth it to be dealt another card depends on the likelihood of that card being a three. If you haven’t seen a single three throughout the game and you’re close to the end, it might be worth the risk!
Other Card Games
These are also some great options if you’re looking to pick up a card game and improve your math savviness!
- War. A simple game involving the comparison of card values, War is great for early elementary students. To practice addition, change the rules to “math war”, where the first player who states the sum of the two cards wins each round.
- Make-10 or Make-25. Variations of Blackjack, these games involve trying to make a certain value (10 or 25) with a certain number of cards.
- Solitaire. An independent card game involving probability and grouping strategy. (Available in so many forms online—just search “Solitaire” for a version built into Google!)
- Balatro. If you’re a gamer who wants a virtual card game to play through on your own, you can’t go wrong with Balatro! The winner of the Best Independent Game award at the 2024 Game Awards, this riff on Poker requires a mind-bending amount of addition and multiplication, toying with order of operations in unique ways that’ll stretch your mental math muscles. (Though, it isn’t free—Balatro is $10 on mobile platforms and about $15 on console/PC.)
Multiplayer Math Games
Everything is more fun with friends by your side. Enlist a friend (or a few!) to take up an online math game with you after school!
There are so many online math games created in order to help students practice their math abilities in an entertaining way. From Coolmath Games to Multiplication.com, there are tons of options out there—especially for elementary and middle school math students!
Making Math Fun with Art
If you wonder how math and art are connected when the subjects seem so different, consider Leonardo Da Vinci. He is famed as both a mathematician and as an artist, known for creating masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and for envisioning new technology (like his flying machine).
Art often involves math (most often geometry) in many ways—see the connection between the two topics with these arts-and-crafts hobbies, great for making math fun!
Carpentry and Woodworking
One of the most-visited concepts in geometry word problems, architecture requires a strong understanding of shapes and angles. While this is an apt career path for creative students who do well in geometry, a more casual exploration of this field is woodworking.
If you want to improve your geometry skills with the wonderful act of creation, consider taking up the woodshop class at your school or joining a community carpentry class. You’ll be able to see the real-life applications of your geometry lessons while learning a valuable and fun skill.
Textile Crafts
Like the idea of working with your hands but not interested in nails and hammers? Textile arts may be up your alley!
From knitting to sewing, crafts that use textiles, yarn, and thread require math in their own ways. Creating clothes requires precise measurements, utilizing geometry in particular (think, cutting at the correct angles and stitching fabrics together in particular ways). Knitting and crocheting both require keeping track of numbers—often increasing and decreasing the quantity of stitches in a row to form 3D shapes.
Many kinds of crafts, especially when creating specific garments or objects, require precise, step-by-step instructions. This is not unlike the formulas and procedures you encounter in math class. In that way, taking up knitting, sewing, or similar craft can help you exercise your “mathematical thinking” without you even realizing it.
Painting
What paintings come to mind when you think of art? Look one up and consider why you thought of it. Perhaps the color palette piqued your interest, or the composition is visually pleasing. Maybe the way the artist depicted perspective creates an interesting effect. Artists achieve many of these aspects that make art visually appealing with the help of math!
Studying paintings and creating your own are creative ways to explore how math manifests in images. At its core, the lines, shapes, and patterns you create utilize Geometry. Perspectives and proportions are achieved by using angles and symmetry, and a balanced composition is created with ratios. As you can see, there is a strong—and often subtle—connection between the creation of an image and mathematics.
On a hands-on level, this connection is even stronger. You can measure the lengths of certain brushstrokes to create precise images and use the grid method to recreate an image—something that’ll get you more comfortable with coordinate grids! Above all, artists rely on ratios for manipulating the paint itself, from pigment:water for the opacity of the paint to the ratio of different hues to mix a new color.
Image to the right: Maybe you’ve heard of the “Golden Ratio” or “Divine Proportion”. This mathematical concept, connected to the Fibonacci numbers, occurs when the ratio of two quantities is approximately 1.618 (the ratio that each Fibonacci number and the one before it gradually gets closer to). This phenomenon is special because it often manifests in nature—its use in artwork creates a visually-pleasing composition.
More Hobbies that Use Math
Uninterested in puzzles or the types of art we discussed and still want to start a hobby that’ll help you get more comfortable with math? One of these activities could become your next favorite hobby!
Math-y Sports
If you’d rather take on a physical sport than practice math problems after school, get the best of both worlds by trying your hand at a sport that utilizes math!
Many ball games (like basketball, football, and soccer) utilize some geometry—you have to aim your throw or kick in a certain way to make the throw successful. Turn up the intensity of those angles with games like billiards, tennis, table tennis, or mini golf, where you’ll often have to send the ball in a precisely-angled path by hitting it against a surface.
For a sport using more arithmetic, some darts games require quick addition. For instance, in the game mode 301, players start with 301 points and compete by subtracting the amount they score each round with the goal to reach exactly zero—no more, no fewer. Bowling and archery, especially if you log the scoring by hand, are also calculation-intensive!
Coding
Technology-related hobbies can be especially useful for learning and using math—especially programming. Make your own website, game, or other computer program by learning how to code!
At the core of programming is binary mathematics, as all modern computers use binary to encode and transmit data. Programmers use discrete math often (entailing logic, probability, combinatorics, and so on), particularly in the development of algorithms, and statistics is useful in dealing with data. Calculus is used in the creation of graphics and scientific computing, and linear algebra (which is generally college-level math) is used in machine learning. Generally, the intensity of mathematics required in coding depends on what you’re trying to create.
While this hobby requires more time investment and a ton more math than the others in this article on making math fun, the combination of puzzle-solving and the potential to create whatever you desire can make coding a very rewarding hobby. (Plus, knowledge of a programming language or two is an advantage to any resume!)
Observation Hobbies
Many of these hobbies require access to certain tools or resources, teammates or opponents to play with, or a steep learning curve before you’re able to show results. If you want a hobby that you can start today with no introduction, consider an observation hobby.
Think of something in nature or your close surroundings that piques your interest. Many people enjoy birdwatching—as it involves learning about the birds in your area and logging when you see new kinds, some describe it to be the real-life version of collecting Pokémon! Train-spotting is beloved around the world in cities with prominent railroads, and many people swear by people-watching as the best way to spend your downtime in public.
An observation hobby is a fun way to exercise your skills in statistics. Get your favorite notetaking method and track particular traits of your subjects. If you’re birdwatching, note the time of day you see the species, its location, and what its traits are. If you’re people-watching, you can record whatever traits you find interesting. How many people are listening to music? How many are alone versus in a pair or group?
Watching and recording your observations is not only a great way to keep your mind sharp and learn about the world around you, but your firsthand analysis of data will also help you see the real-life applications of statistics. Plus, if you organize them digitally, you can make fun charts and improve your excel skills!
Learning as a Hobby: Making Math Practice Fun!
While these math hobbies for students are great ways to integrate mathematics in other activities, making math fun in and of itself is the best way to ensure a lifelong passion for mathematics.
There are many ways to stay entertained by the concepts you study. Come up with your own proofs of geometric theorems, create word problems based on your everyday life, or try to solve problem sets as fast as you can. Or, take a math course online and reward yourself when you see improvement!
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