The Math Studio: Harnessing the Power of the Arts to Teach across Disciplines

In a conference room at the MIT Media lab, six students from Boston's public high schools are using computers to design posters that will be printed on three-foot sheets of paper and hung proudly on the wall. One student's design is a set of colored circles arcing gracefully toward the edge of the page; the circles form a perfectly symmetrical design but also draw attention away from the center of the image. Another student is working on a suite of images made by reflecting a triangle in two perpendicular mirrors. The posters are explorations of the mathematics of symmetry and principles of graphic design. Some of the students think of this as an art class; others think they are learning about mathematics. All of them know that this feels different from their classes at school.