Winners Mathekalender 2020
Every year, 4TU.AMI joins forces with the Berlin Mathematics Research Center MATH+ to organize the Mathekalender. This annual, digital advent calendar contains 24 challenging puzzles, aimed at curious high school students, university students, teachers, and everyone interested. From 1 to 24 December, a Christmas-themed math puzzle is published each day. Points can be scored by submitting the correct answer the same day (5 points), the following day (3 points) or any other day before the start of the new year (1 point). Prizes are awarded by drawing lots, where the number of lots corresponds to the number of points acquired by solving the challenges.
Besides competing for the overall prizes handed out by MATH+, the top-scoring Dutch high school student receives a prize sponsored by 4TU.AMI. In the December 2020 edition of the Mathekalender, the following two Dutch students tied for first place, correctly solving 23 puzzles and scoring an impressive total of 111 points:
- Kevin van Dijk (Stedelijk Gymnasium Nijmegen)
- Thian Tromp (Christelijk Gymnasium Beyers Naudé, Leeuwarden)
Due to some unfortunate circumstances, the award ceremony took place a lot later than desired. Kevin and Thian both graduated from high school in 2021 and currently study at Utrecht University (coincidentally following the same double Bachelor's programme in Physics and Mathematics). Fortunately, Kevin's old high school mathematics teacher offered to host the award ceremony at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Nijmegen.
So on 21 June, Kevin returned to his old school, joined by Thian. They received their award certificate and 500 euro prize -to be spent on a laptop or tablet- at the start of a mathematics lesson for some of the school's current 5 vwo pupils. For the remainder of the lesson, Pim van 't Hof (lecturer at the University of Twente) gave a short presentation about the Fold-and-cut Theorem: the pupils were challenged to cut out some pre-drawn simple polygons from a piece of paper (after folding) using a single straight cut, before learning that any straight-line drawing can be cut out that way.
4TU.AMI congratulates Kevin and Thian with their excellent performance, and wishes them the best of luck in their studies!
From left to right: Pim van 't Hof (4TU.AMI & UT), Thian Tromp, Kevin van Dijk, Hennie ter Morsche (4TU.AMI & TU/e).