Moscow schoolchildren took part in the Mathematical holiday

Children solved extraordinary problems, played games and listened to speeches by eminent scientists.

21 thousand metropolitan students of the 6th and 7th grades took part in the Mathematical holiday. Schoolchildren attended the Olympiad, games and lectures. The event was held at various venues in Moscow, including more than 60 schools, as well as Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics. There was no pre-selection for the holiday, for children to participate it was enough to register.

As part of the Olympiad tasks, schoolchildren had to not only give the correct answer, but also give a complete solution, share the course of their thoughts. To do this, they needed not only knowledge of the subject: it was more important to use ingenuity and imagination. Thus, sixth graders compared large sums, cut a conditional cookie into a certain number of equal parts and tried to place as many violinists as possible on 16 notebook cells. And students of the 7th grade looked for beautiful dates in the number 2023, built an island of cubes in an imaginary empty pool and determined the weight of gold coins. For the participants of the Olympiad, we prepared tasks of two levels of difficulty to choose from.

“Mathematical holiday attracts children not because they can win there, but because they can solve interesting problems. That is why I always ask parents and teachers after the holiday not to ask what place you took or how many tasks you solved, but which task you liked. Moreover, many tasks, although they are quite simple and accessible to the sixth and seventh grades, are associated with different, most modern areas of mathematics. For example, my lecture today was devoted to topology and Morse theory, and I began this lecture with the analysis of the second problem for the seventh grade, ”said Ivan Yashchenko, scientific director of the Center for Pedagogical Excellence, chairman of the organizing committee of the event.

After the Olympiad, mathematical games and lectures by leading scientists and teachers were held at a number of venues. The organizers and compilers of the tasks of the holiday, Ivan Yashchenko, the scientific director of the Center for Mathematics, Mikhail Evdokimov, the author of the journal Kvantik, Evgeny Shiryaev, the methodologist of the Masterskaya Nauki, and Evgeny Smirnov, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Mathematics of the Higher School of Economics, spoke at Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics. Among the topics of their speeches are the history of time measurement and the relationship between graph theory, geography, topology and medicine and the history of time measurement.

A meeting was held at Moscow State University with the head of the Mathematics Propaganda Laboratory of the Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lilavati Prize laureate Nikolai Andreev. The holiday ended with a concert of the author’s song at the Higher School of Economics Sergei Nikitin.

According to the organizers, inspiring speeches by experts play an important role in the holiday, but even more important is the fact that schoolchildren themselves try to solve extraordinary mathematical tasks. This is confirmed by the words of the sixth grader Petra from school number 1317.

“I really like it here, because it’s fun, there are a lot of games and lectures, but at the same time the Olympiad itself is very interesting and unusual. I completed all the tasks and am very satisfied. In general, I would like to connect my life with mathematics, because in the modern world this is the most promising area. And the Mathematical holiday, it seems to me, is a great start, ”Pyotr said.

If desired, students of lower grades could also join the participants. So, Irina, a fifth-grader from school No. 1518, also wrote the Olympiad.

“Most of all I was impressed by the unique atmosphere at the event. This is my first Math Festival, but I am sure that I will participate more than once! In general, I became interested in the Olympiad movement thanks to the school: we have additional classes in Olympiad mathematics. On them, the teacher and I analyze tasks of increased complexity. Thanks to the computational skills, ingenuity, intelligence that I developed on my own and in the classroom, I quite successfully, it seems to me, coped with the tasks, ”shared Irina.

View the proposed tasks and their video analysis can be on Math Feast website. The event has been held since 1990, it is organized by the Moscow Department of Education and Science, Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematical Education, the Higher School of Economics and the Center for Pedagogical Excellence with the participation of leading universities and schools of the city.

Moscow actively supports students who are fond of mathematics. Children attend specialized circles, participate in olympiads and solve interesting problems as part of the school curriculum. In addition, the city has a project “Mathematical vertical”, for which the leading teachers of the city have developed special textbooks. It provides students with multipurpose pre-professional training in mathematics and related fields.

Mona Platonov.

Photo by Moskovskaya Pravda