What its all about…

Our Story

Joyful Mathematics is a 100% Latino owned business, founded by Federico Chialvo in 2019, with the goal of improving people’s relationships with mathematics. After over 15 years working to spark joyful mathematics inside the classroom, Federico wanted to take what he learned and make products that could have a similar impact on people all over the world.

As a parent of 3 kids (now aged 8, 11, and 14) and a busy professional, Federico knows how hard it can be sometimes to find the space, time, or energy to get his family engaged in joyful mathematics. That’s why our games aim to take a minute to learn, yet provide surprisingly rich gameplay that feel just like a classic game that you’d play again and again.

Joyful Mathematics’ first published game was MULTI, a game that Federico had play-tested for over a decade with his students before launching on Kickstarter in 2019. MULTI is now in its third printing, and has been played by people all over the world.

In 2021, Joyful Mathematics was selected for the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) Horizons Fellowship, an eight-month accelerator program for newly established tabletop game publishers from underrepresented backgrounds in the game industry.

During the pandemic, Federico had started prototyping a new deck of cards to play with his kids at home. The number cards had prime factorization diagrams on them, and the games all related to common factors, prime numbers, and other properties of natural numbers. By 2022, Numeroso was ready to launch on Kickstarter, and successfully funded in less than a day! Numeroso was manufactured and shipped in 2023.

By the end of 2023, Federico had spent a few years working in EdTech, and wanted to apply the speed of development and deployment of EdTech to his game design ideas. He was inspired by one of the games he designed for Numeroso Cards, and started developing NumberSpark.com with his long time Advisor and friend Charlie VanNorman.

In 2024, we launched the “Daily Shuffle” on numberspark.com, something that was inspired by the way Wordle provided a shared joyful experience, and connected people. The Daily Shuffle is a puzzle that’s the same for everyone on the planet for 24 hours, with unlimited tries, and a global leaderboard.

Highlights from the first five years

• 2019 MULTI successfully funded on kickstarter

• 2020 MULTI first print run manufactured and shipped

• 2021 Joyful Mathematics was selected for the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) Horizons Fellowship

• 2022 Numeroso Launched on kickstarter, MULTI in its 2nd printing

• 2023 Numeroso’s first print run manufactured and shipped, NumberSpark.com development began

• 2024 Launch of the daily shuffle on NumberSpark.com, MULTI in its 3rd printing

Team, Contributor & Advisors

Joyful Mathematics has received support from many individuals. Here is a list of current and former team members, contributors, and advisors who have significantly impacted the organization in recent years, arranged in roughly the order they first contributed.