Mozart Schule Concepción was crowned in the First Interschoool DSALT Championship

Colegio de la Santísima Trinidad and The Wessex School took second and third place, respectively.

Last Saturday morning, November 4, at the Innovation Center building of the Universidad del Bío-Bío, Concepción campus, the last of the three challenge sessions of the ‘First Interschool Computational Mathematics Championship’ organized by the DSALT Anillo Project on Computational Mathematics for Desalination Problems (ACT210087-ANID) was held.  

In the activity, corresponding to the final of the competition, the participants had to deploy all the knowledge acquired during the two previous sessions to solve six new challenges, each one more complex than the previous one, proposed by the DSALT scientists.

The activity began with a motivating greeting from Dr. David Mora Herrera, director of the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Sciences of the UBB, and then moved on to the presentation of the challenges by the director of the Anillo Project and associate researcher of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the U. of Chile, Dr. Ricardo Oyarzúa Vargas, who commented that “Numerical Analysis is the most developed area of mathematics with the greatest scientific impact in terms of publications and citations in Concepción, promoted by academics from the U. de Concepción (UdeC), U. del Bío-Bío (UBB) and U. Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC), under the auspices of the UdeC Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering (CI²MA)”.   

“However”, he continued, “the above is little known in the school community, and high school students have little knowledge of the area. Moreover, most schools do not have implemented in their curricula, topics of mathematical problem solving with computational tools”.   

“Motivated by the above is that, in the context of our ring project, we organized this championship to encourage computational mathematics at school level, in a dynamic and interactive way, in which students could solve simple applied problems using numerical methods”, explained the researcher.   

“And, surprisingly, the students solved very quickly all the problems we set them in the final, applying all the knowledge acquired during the previous workshops, which left us very motivated to continue with the championship in the coming years”, added Oyarzúa.   

Thus, according to the scores obtained, the three outstanding establishments in the ‘First Interscholastic Championship of Computational Mathematics DSALT’, whose representatives received their awards in a brief awards ceremony that began with the greeting of the Academic Secretary of the Faculty of Sciences of the UBB and CMM associate researcher, Dr. Luis Miguel Villada, were:  

• 1st place: Mozart Schule Concepción 
• 2nd Place: Colegio de la Santísima Trinidad   
• 3rd place: The Wessex School  

The researcher of the DSALT Group Project and academic of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics of the U. Católica de la Santísima Concepción and principal investigator of the CMM, Dr. Jessika Camaño Valenzuela, highlighted that “this first computational mathematics championship fulfilled the expectations we had. We were able to give them a glimpse of some of the basic tools that we use every day when we program, and this was very well received by the students. They even expressed their interest in participating next year in a new championship that we organized. It was hard work with our colleagues, but very rewarding. Finally, I would like to emphasize that, even though it was a competition, it was a very pleasant and entertaining atmosphere”.   

“As the Organizing Committee, we learned several lessons to improve the dynamics and logistics of the championship in the future,” said Dr. Manuel Solano Palma, DSALT researcher, member of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the UdeC and associate researcher of the CMM. “Our idea is to hold it annually and maintain it over time as part of the multiple collaborative activities between the three houses of studies (UBB, UCSC and UdeC) that the Numerical Analysis of PDEs group has been carrying out for several years”.  

Participants talk

Amanda Gómez Gutiérrez was a member of the champion team and stated that her motivation to participate “was to learn about the OCTAVE program and I was not familiar with programming issues, so I saw it as an excellent opportunity to learn and come to the classes and more or less learn how this contest works, because it is also the first time I participate in something like this. It was super good, the classes were very good, it motivated me to learn more about the program, to look for videos, to see how it worked, to look for other problems so as not to arrive at the next session without any idea and I found it a super good opportunity to see, I had to research everything outside of class to be able to keep up to date”.   

Meanwhile, Aníbal Meersohn Bórquez is a second-year student at Santísima Trinidad and explained that “I knew a little about Scratch, but I had never worked directly programming, with everything they taught us here in the sessions, I came home to try to apply it to solve the challenges, but it was very difficult. Even so, I can say I learned, I understood the logic of how it worked”.  

Florencia Suazo Hermosilla is in third grade at Wessex School and was motivated to participate in the competition because “I have always liked mathematics and because I like to participate in competitions, learn and be with my friends. I am interested in computational mathematics, and I have even thought about studying computer engineering, but I didn’t know much about it”. 

“Taking the program was complicated at first”, he explains, “because we didn’t know much about functions, so we were a bit lost with it, but we were able to adapt and learned a lot. It was a very good experience”.  

Óscar Pino Vega is a third-year student at Thomas Jefferson and commented that “I like mathematics and also programming, so I was interested in participating in this championship. I liked it a lot and in this last class, I realized that I learned, I did well. Before coming, I understood something, I knew something about derivatives, I had heard about it, but I didn’t know how to do it or anything like that. And I didn’t know the methods we use either, but I quickly began to understand it”.

By Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, CMM journalist.

Posted on Nov 17, 2023 in News