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Ask HN: How would you give away free copies of Mathematica?

4 points by tonygonz ↗ HN
We're a startup translation/publishing company that's just released our first book, a niche young adult novel that uses fiction as an introduction to advanced mathematics. Since we're unfunded and bootstrapped, we have pretty much zero advertising budget. In an amazing stroke of luck, the book has attracted the attention of Wolfram Research, who was kind enough to donate 5 Mathematica for Students licenses for us to use as giveaways in a promotional campaign.

Our initial plan was to use them in a Twitter retweet campaign or something similar. That seems kind of shallow, though, so we're looking for ideas for something a bit more interesting and engaging. An ideal contest would 1) target high school and college students (the licenses can only be awarded to currently enrolled students), 2) involve teaching and/or learning math in some way, and 3) be equitable, so that pretty much anyone who wants to take part can without having to spend a lot of money, or have access to specialized equipment.

Right now we're considering a writing contest—much of the book is the main characters working through challenging math problems, so we thought that it would be neat to have a fanfic contest where readers submit their own take on that. Anyone have any other interesting ideas?

2 comments

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ImprovedSilence
Is there some kind of nationwide high school "math club" or something? Kinda like the Science Olympiads, or the 24 clubs there used to be (or may still be) At the college level, I'm sure there's something too. I'd try to find that type of organization, and reach out to their national office. From there, and what type of "contest" or promotion you'd like to try, I'm not really sure. I'd try to reach out to math teachers as well, ontop of your direct audience (I'm assuming the kids) they tend to have a big influence on what their students are exposed to.
gujk
Contest: submit a problem they want to solve using mathematics, possibly with real or fictional backstory. Like your fanfic idea.