The department of mathematics hosted the very first Mathematics Day on Friday, which included student presentations, games and a gala fest featuring charades, math jeopardy and a talent show.

The free all-day event started with student presentations covering topics from mathematics and music to artificial intelligence.

Math majors Andrea Carrillo, Francisco Delgado and Angel Rosales were one of the last groups to present their topic. They discussed handcuff puzzle, a game in which people are linked together by string handcuffs. They considered if it was possible to unlink one another without taking off the string handcuffs.

They incorporated the audience and even asked for some volunteers to go up and demonstrate with them.

The idea of presenting the handcuff puzzle came from Rosales.

“We used this game as an icebreaker at my job,” he said. “Math is fun. It’s not just sitting there writing numbers.”

Rosales hopes to spark interest in math. ­

“It’s not too late for you to change your major,” he said.

Mathematics professor Dr. Tamas Forgacs hoped Mathematics Day would help people gain an appreciation for math.

“Math is not all about formulas and papers,” he said. “Math is everywhere. We wanted to reach out to the undergraduate mathematics majors and have a day where it’s a little less structured and a little more fun.”

He said the event was more of a community-building event and not about hardcore math.

“It’s more about fun problems and discussing what is fun about mathematics,” Forgacs said.

Third-year math major Rudy Gurrola came out to the event to support the department. She said she hops to learn new information from the student presentations.

“I just want people to know that math is very interesting,” she said.

Mathematics professor Dr. Steven S. Chung said the reason for the event was for people to become interested in math and acknowledge the fact that math can be fun.

“Not a lot of people are interested in math,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re having this day.”

­­­­­­­ “There’s no technical math problems involved. From the presentations that we had, you can see there was no technical math.”

­­­­­­­ The rest of the event consisted of games such as charades, board games and math jeopardy.

Chung hopes the Mathematics Day event will be repeated next year since there was a good turnout this year.