Category: General

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.

We are delighted to welcome two new Slovakian partner schools: Prince Pribina Primary School in Nitra and Spojená škola sv. Jozefa Primary School in Nové Mesto nad Váhom.

Prince Pribina Primary School has created 6 Math Trails with a total of 57 tasks. The trails have been downloaded over 60 times.

The trails can be found under the following links: 1818228, 1514734, 3915577, 4716942, 2616943, 5616945, 5612214.

MathCityMap came to the school through Veronika Bočková, after which Katarína Máčiková introduced the Math Trails to the summer school. Dominika Takacova then launched a series of Christmas-themed trails starting on St. Nicholas Day. The tasks involved simple addition and subtraction problems in the number range up to 100. Over 60 second-graders took part in the trails.

The next trails are planned around Easter and towards the end of the school year. We are already very excited to see what great new tasks and trails there will be in the near future!

The Spojená škola sv. Jozefa elementary school also created two exciting trails (4710982 and 3411563), which were also completed by over 60 learners. In the first trail, the children received the tasks on paper and then entered the solutions online in the classroom. In the second trail, the solutions were entered directly into the smartphones on site. They found that good reading comprehension and good measurement accuracy are very important.

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.

The MathCityMap year 2023 was characterized by great media interest in Slovakia. The MathCityMap team in Nitra consists of Veronika Bočková, Michal Fojtík, Silvia Haringová, Janka Medová and Katarína Laššová from the Department of Mathematics at Constantine University of Philosophy (UKF), but they also draw on the expertise of other colleagues in the department. In recent years, math trails have become part of the preparation of future math teachers for all grades. The team from Nitra has trained more than 750 math teachers in education, conducted math trails in more than 20 Slovak schools and prepared workshops for future teachers also abroad. In 2023, the general public and the media became aware of their campaign for the first time.

At the beginning of the calendar year, on January 20, 2023, an article about math trails appeared in the Nitra district newspaper. Readers were able to find out what the math trails are, what their goal is, who can participate in them and which mathematical tasks cause problems for learners. The interview was conducted with PhD student Silvia Haringová.

On February 28, 2023, university students gathered to hear the inspiring stories of their fellow students. During the evening, there were presentations about math trails, successful research in the field of molecular biology at UKF and the importance of volunteering for the further development of students. The Math Trails were also presented by Silvia Haringová.

The SCIENCE ON DOSAH science portal offers a wealth of news, information and entertainment from the world of science and technology. In a single place you can discover everything about science, research, events and other interesting activities in this field in Slovakia.

On May 10, 2023, Janka Medová and Silvia Haringová from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Informatics at UKF spoke about Math Trails in the podcast of the VEDA NA DOSAH portal in Slovak.

Reflex is a daily magazine consisting of stories whose main heroes are the citizens of Slovakia. It is broadcast in the afternoons by Slovakia’s largest private television station, TV Markíza. It consists of strong human stories full of emotions, investigative reports, interesting facts and showbiz. Every day brings new topics, a different atmosphere, a different mood. Veronika Bočková and her students, Janka Medová and Silvia Haringová, were part of this program on June 30, 2023.

Quark Magazine is a magazine about science and technology for all curious people that explains even complex things in simple language. Every month it brings the latest information about science, research, discoveries and new technologies in Slovakia and around the world on 56 pages. The August issue includes four pages about Math Trails with MathCityMap. The questions were answered by Janka Medová and Silvia Haringová.

Every year, an autumn school is organized by Zuzana and Peter Bero, who have been providing math textbooks and workbooks to teachers and students at primary and secondary schools for more than twenty years. This year, Silvia Haringová had the opportunity to give a lecture there. On September 29, 2023, she presented the “Mathematics trails and Matrix” project to more than 100 teachers in training.

The second webinar on math trails was held on November 8, 2023 via the Facebook platform. Around 300 people expressed their interest in this event. In addition to basic information, participants learned how to implement and create mathematical paths. They received useful advice on creating tasks and paths and were informed about the advantages of the Matrix project. The webinar was led by Silvia Haringová, Veronika Bočková and Janka Medová.

Nočná pyramída is a Slovakian radio program broadcast on Radio Slovensko. Radio Slovensko’s night program offers exclusive interviews with interesting guests. Radio Slovensko presenters invite popular artists, prominent scientists, successful athletes, doctors and educators to the studio to discuss both entertaining and serious topics. The invitation to the Night Pyramid was accepted by Janka Medová, who spoke about her professional and private life on November 20, 2023 and also presented Math Trails.
Thanks to the interest of the public and the media, Math-Trails and MathCityMap are becoming more and more popular and their use in math lessons is gradually becoming a welcome activity in all schools in Slovakia.
We are very happy about the great events and achievements and are looking forward to what 2024 has in store for MathCityMap in Slovakia and the other partner countries.