Author: Isabella Gogesch

Last month, the trail with the most downloads came from the Ceibal mathematics department (Ceibal is a Uruguayan initiative to implement the “one laptop per child” model for the introduction of information and communication technologies in primary and secondary schools1) in Uruguay. The trail is called “Problemas STEAM geolocalizados” and can be found under the following code 4520262. Those responsible, Analí da Silva and Verónica Campanella, told us how the trail came about and what is behind it:

“The idea for this trail emerged as a collaboration between two members of the educators’ team aiming to integrate STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) concepts into outdoor learning environments. We aimed to create an interactive and engaging experience that would challenge students to apply their mathematical skills in real-world contexts.
To develop the trail, we carefully selected locations within our community that offered interesting geometric features, architectural elements, or natural phenomena suitable for posing mathematical problems. We then designed a series of challenges and activities that required students to use mathematical reasoning and problem-solving strategies to complete.
Throughout the development process, we collaborated with local experts in various fields, including mathematics, architecture, and environmental science, to ensure the accuracy and educational value of the trail.”

We are very happy about such a great and intensive engagement with the local environment and mathematical aspects and are already very excited to see what other interesting trails there will be in the future.

The following pictures give an insight into the places where the trail tasks are located:

The Pavol Demitru Primary School and Kindergarten (Základná škola s materskou školou Pavla Demitru) is our newest and twelfth partner school in Slovakia. We are very pleased to welcome them and look forward to working with them.

The teacher Kristína Čierniková has created two exciting trails in cooperation with the University of Constantine the Philosopher. The first trail “Námestie Matice slovenskej” (Code:  1620472) (translated: Square of the Slovak Matrix) contains 10 tasks that were created at the Square of the Slovak Matrix in the Trenčín region.

The second trail “Po stopách histórie mesta Dubnica nad Váhom” (Code: 3620281) (translated: On the traces of the history of Dubnica nad Váhom) allows you to explore many historical monuments of the town of Dubnica nad Váhom in a mathematical way.

The Math Trails were carried out with over 40 5th, 8th and 9th grade students. The children had a lot of fun and the following photographs provide an insight into the lessons:

We are also very much looking forward to more exciting trails and tasks!

The packages with the official partner school badge and the MCM measuring instruments are already on their way to the schools and we are already looking forward to receiving more applications from all over the world.

All further information on the partner school program and the requirements for the application can be found in the article on the first MCM partner school as well as on the homepage of our MaSCE³ project.

This month, the trail “MATEMARDIKA ZOO-A” (code: 2416904) was downloaded over 180 times. It has thus surpassed all other trails. The trail was created in Semarang, Indonesia, and contains 5 tasks. These were created in the Semarang Zoo in a tourist area to commemorate Indonesia’s 78th Independence Day.

MATEMARDIKA is a combination of the words matematika (mathematics) and mereka (you/them). The trail in honor of Indonesia’s 78th Independence Day is to invite people to celebrate the day in a mathematical way, support Semarang Smart City and implement mathematics education in the real world, as well as introduce the tourist destinations of Semarang city.

Since 2013, the city of Semarang has had a smart city concept, through which various information technologies are to be implemented and realized in the city. In 2019, the city of Semarang was recognized by the Ministry of National Development Planning as the best city in the Development Awards. The acronym BE SMART CITY stands for “Based on E-gov, Semarang More Accountable, Realistic and the Transparent City”.

One task from the trail shows how wonderfully the creators of the trail have linked information about the zoo and the surrounding area with mathematical content:

“Semarang Zoo is not only a place to conserve animals, but also has numerous parks. The gardens are designed to support the comfort of visitors. In the play area, there are seats built around cute cow puppets. The seats are also used as large pots with shade plants or ornamental plants. The seats are large enough to accommodate several people at the same time. How large is the area of the seat (in meters²)?”

(Source: https://mathcitymap.eu/de/portal/#!/trail/2416904)

March and April were very productive and training-rich months. At the end of March, Tim, Matthias and Isabella went to the MNU national congress. This year it took place in Jena. The forecourt of the Volkshaus provided many great opportunities for new MathCityMap tasks. The congress stand was supervised throughout the entire period and on the last day a workshop on MathCityMap was organized with over 30 enthusiastic participants. The teachers were all very enthusiastic about our system and many also want to become part of the community.

The next trip for Simon, Matthias and Isabella was to the MATHE.FORSCHER Kick-Off in Heilbronn in mid-April. At this special event, we were once again able to present MathCityMap and also created tasks on the educational campus in advance.

As the grand finale, Matthias and Isabella were in Neustadt an der Weinstraße and gave two training courses for teachers, for which Matthias had created the tasks the day before. The weather was particularly good here, the sun was shining and all the participants had a lot of fun.

We are already looking forward to further training courses and workshops. If you would also like us to explain the system to you and your colleagues in more detail, please feel free to contact us by e-Mail at any time.

After some time, we would like to give you an insight into the current statistics of MathCityMap.

Since the system was launched on 01.01.2016, the app has been downloaded a total of 192,316 times.

There have been a total of 82,748 tasks and 30,004 users.

Moreover there havae been 8543 digital classrooms over the past years and with each day it´s getting more and more.

Thanks to the partner school program, a total of 44 schools worldwide can call themselves a MathCityMap partner school.

The trail that has been downloaded and completed the most in the last month is the trail “Praça da República, no Porto” by Alcina Lourenço. The public trail can be viewed under the following code: 3614904. Alcina Lourenço created this trail when she got to know MathCityMap and used the app for a while. She wanted to use it to develop her teaching practice and has used the trail several times with her own students. She has had many great experiences with MathCityMap and her students have also had a lot of fun trying out and getting to know the app.

Their trail is currently being used by many different independent teachers for their own lessons, which is why almost 200 downloads have taken place in the last month. This is an impressive number and we are curious to see how often the trail will be used in schools in the future.

Here you can gain a small insight into the environment of the tasks:

Alcina Lourenço can be contacted over Facebook or LinkedIn.

The MathCityMap team wishes you a Happy Easter and is curious to see if some of you have hidden the Easter eggs this year with the help of an exciting trail. MathCityMap is certainly one of the best apps to combine Easter with math and fun.

As a thank you for our great community, we have come up with an Easter special: an Easter riddle with a little surprise. The solutions can be sent to gogesch@math.uni-frankfurt.de with the subject “EasterMath” by April 14, 2024 and the first three correct answers will receive a small surprise from the MathCityMap team by post.

We hope that we can make everyone happy with the puzzle and some with the surprise.

The riddle:

The Easter Bunny wants to train his Easter Bunny apprentices and comes up with a delightful riddle. He takes two identical Easter baskets and paints 10 chocolate Easter eggs with green paint and 10 foam Easter eggs with red paint.
He gathers everyone together and says: “You can divide all the eggs between the two baskets however you like. Tomorrow you have to pull an egg out of one of the two baskets blindfolded. If you draw a chocolate Easter egg, you will advance to the next training level.”

How do the Easter bunny apprentices have to distribute the Easter eggs so that the chance of advancement is particularly high? How high is the probability then?

(based on: Eder, H.-K. (2020). Zauberhafte Mathematik – Mathematische Rätsel und Knobeleien. Munich: Hanser.)

The trail “Da CUXte: Mathematik von der Jugendherberge in Duhnen bis zur Kugelbake in Döse” by Alexandra Holtkötter was the most downloaded trail last month. Alexandra Holtkötter is a teacher at Max-Planck-Gymnasium and told us what the trail is all about:

“From the seabed to outer space – math is everywhere!

Measuring, estimating and combining, mathematical knowledge can be applied at ten stations along the approx. 4.4-kilometer route to collect points and gain information about mudflats, storm surges, crabs and sea.

Every year, all 8th graders at the Max Planck Gymnasium in Dortmund set off on a STEM trip to “travel” around the world along the 8th longitude east at the Klimahaus Bremerhaven, experience the mudflats at the Cuxhaven travel station in the National Park, analyze water samples and do math in the fresh North Sea air.

In small groups, measurements are taken to calculate the area of a triangular canvas, to determine the inclination of the dike; combinatorics helps to determine the seating possibilities on a round tree bench, the height of the spherical beacon can be estimated with the help of the second ray theorem, for example, …

Perhaps the insight of “traveler” Axel Werner from the Klimahaus will be confirmed: “You don’t always have to travel far to have interesting travel experiences.””

We are very grateful for this exciting insight into the mathematical world of the Max-Planck-Gymnasium and look forward to many other classes being able to experience this interesting journey.

A few insights into the surroundings of Cuxhaven and the associated tasks now follow:

The MathCityMap web portal recently added 78,557 tasks. Within a few weeks, almost 3 thousand tasks have been added and it is likely that the 80,000 tasks will be cracked just as quickly in the near future. We are very proud and particularly pleased about the many dedicated community members who regularly create exciting tasks for their learners to offer them added value and a change from regular math lessons.

What’s the story behind the number 78,557? It is the smallest Sierpinski number found to date. Larger numbers have also been found, but none smaller so far. The question of whether this is the smallest Sierpinski number has been unanswered since 1967. The second project is currently underway to check whether there is another smaller number in the number set for which the conditions apply¹.

A Sierpinski number k is an odd natural number for which it is true that no prime number appears anywhere in the set {k⋅2n+1 : n ∈ IN}2 The US mathematician John L. Selfridge proved that 78,557 is a Sierpinski number by first showing that 78,557⋅2ⁿ+1 is divisible by at least one of the primes {3, 5, 7, 13, 19, 37, 73} for all n greater than or equal to 1. He then established that this is repeated every 36n in a so-called covering set. All cases can then be covered by congruence³.

We are already looking forward to reaching 80,000 tasks and many other milestones.

The trail “Paseo Matemático en CCH Naucalpan 2022” (3910980) by David Sánchez has a total of almost 600 downloads and has been downloaded over 150 times in the last 30 days alone. This makes it the most visited trail of the last month.

Every year, the students of the Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades Plantel Naucalpan complete this trail to get to know the emblematic buildings of their school and test their geometric skills.

After the end of the 2022 pandemic, the community was welcomed back outside with this trail under the motto “walk, calculate and make history”. This Video gives a little insight into the event (in Spanish).

A teacher and masked wrestler leads this project and calls himself “El Matemático de CCH” (“The CCH Mathematician”).

In addition, the school has two other exciting trails (5617448 and 4813875), that serve to celebrate International Math Day.

The school has set itself the goal of developing a Math Trail that has the most participants in the entire world.

We are excited to see what great things the school and El Matemático de CCH will achieve in the future.

If you are also interested in becoming one of our partner schools, you can find all the important information here.