Miller wins TI contest

Anywhere from November to December Texas Instruments hosts its annual Math Carol Contest.

Those who take part must create a festive jingle or tune featuring a math concept, calculator tip or anything math related.

The video clip is 30-seconds or less and entrants can recite lyrics, sing, dance or play music.

They must incorporate a TI graphing calculator, software or app into their video. Once that is done the entrants post their videos on a public Instagram or YouTube account using #SpreadMathCarols and tag @TICalculators with a brief caption about their carol.

The 2023 Grand Prize winner was Bloomburg educator Weston Miller who posted an amazing video he and his daughter Ella came up with.

The jingle is catchy and involves lyrics concerning the TI-84 calculator. “Alpha – Y= Fractions Operations Simple” is sure to get you thinking.

By pressing the Alpha key on the upper left of the TI-84 Plus keypad then pressing the Y= key brings up a series of shortcut menus.

Miller had this to say about the contest. “This was Texas Instruments’ annual Math Carol Contest. Entrants are tasked with writing a 30 second Christmas-themed jingle that features some sort of tip or functionality with the TI calculators. We then had to create a video featuring the jingle and post to social media.”

Miller discussed how his idea began to take shape for the contest.

“I was sitting in my living room on Thanksgiving break when I got the email about the upcoming contest,” Miller said. “I had started a small music production business earlier in the year, so when I saw the contest, I knew I had to enter. It was right up my alley. How many math teacher music nerds can there possibly be out there?”

“I spent about five minutes scribbling some lyrics on a napkin, put together a beat and recorded the lyrics, then spent a couple hours in the afternoon putting together the video,” Miller continued. “My wife filmed the video and all the ideas were the result of a brainstorming session with my daughter, Ella, who is featured in the video as well. She is in dance and extremely creative, so this worked out well.”

Miller describes his elation with winning and the aftermath, no pun intended.

“The whole thing was a blast, winning was just the cherry on top. Since then, it’s been kinda funny to hear students at school sing the song,” Miller remarked.