On February 12, 2020, two members of the Dutch A-lympiad Committee in the Netherlands, Tom Goris and Ruud Stolwijk, were invited to give a special science lesson to the second-year students. The class, which was held only in English, was titled, “Mathematics in Real Life: Join the A-lympiad.”
Students worked on activities that captured real-world phenomena mathematically, such as calculating the number of draws from the soccer league’s point table, as well as working out to find the number of participating countries and the number of participants in the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge (IMMC) this coming year. This was done by checking the shifting of the current number of countries and participants.
The unusual mathematical activities were difficult but quite enjoyable, as the students used various approaches that showed how mathematics is used in daily life. Some of these methods included examining questions that have no fixed answers, or questions that could be considered from different viewpoints and approaches, which stimulated the students’ curiosity a great deal.
Utilizing graphs, the students were able to visually see and understand the changes that occur in phenomena. These realizations about how things change can provide valuable experience to the students, and they can hopefully use what they learned during the lesson in their futures.