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The competition will be held over three days and seeks to encourage computational mathematics in early stages.
The second version of the ‘Interscholastic Computational Mathematics Championship – DSALT ‘ began last Saturday 19 at the University of Concepción, UdeC, with an introduction on fundamental contents, a brief training on the use of the free scientific calculation software OCTAVE and the presentation of the first challenge of the competition whose solution must be presented by the teams on the second day.
The activity was led by Dr. Ricardo Oyarzúa Vargas, director of the DSALT Group Project ‘Computational Mathematics for Desalination Problems ‘ of the National Research and Development Agency, ANID (ACT210087), who is also a researcher at the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) of the University of Chile.
“On this first day, we presented some basic programming concepts with OCTAVE, which is a free software widely used by us in Numerical Analysis courses for different undergraduate careers”, commented the also academic of the Mathematics Department of the Universidad del Bío-Bío (UBB) and member of the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering (CI²MA) of the UdeC.
“The idea,” explained the scientist, ”is that the students become familiar with this software and, at the end of the championship, are able to solve applied problems using a computer. In addition, we introduce some simple mathematical notions that will allow them to face the challenges they will have to solve in future days. We saw students and teachers very enthusiastic and eager to participate”.
“This is the second version of the championship that we started in 2023, which aims to motivate computational mathematics at school level,” he explained. In the first version, we realized that the students were able to grasp and quickly solve the problems we set them, which left us with a great sense of satisfaction with what we did and motivated us to continue with this idea.”
DSALT focuses on the mathematical analysis and computational implementation of numerical schemes that allow the computational simulation of seawater desalination processes. To this purpose, it brings together scientists from the universities of Bío-Bío (UBB), Concepción (UdeC) and Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC), all specialists in Numerical Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, who are also members of the Mathematical Modeling Center of the University of Chile.
DSALT is currently in its final stage of execution. “Within the framework of the commitments acquired when applying for the Group project, one of our key objectives was scientific dissemination, especially at the school level,” commented Oyarzúa.
“Looking for a format that would allow us to meet this goal, we decided to organize this championship, with the purpose of bringing computational mathematics closer to the school community, an area that is not very well known in that environment. Through this event, we hope to contribute significantly in that direction, promoting interest and understanding of this discipline”, emphasized the project director.
The 2023 version of the championship had the participation of five teams from high schools in the Concepción intercommunity, with the Mozart Schule representatives winning. This year, there are seven competing schools:
- Colegio Almondale Lomas
- Almondale San Pedro de la Paz School
- Almondale Valle School
- Colegio Santísima Trinidad
- Instituto Humanidades de Concepción
- Mozart Schule Concepción
- The Wessex School
The next sessions of the championship will be held on Saturdays October 26 at UCSC and November 9 at UBB.
By Iván R. Tobar Bocaz, journalist of the Center for Mathematical Modeling, Concepción.
Posted on Oct 24, 2024 in News
