20 children will boost math talent

20 children will boost math talent

The Ecuadorian Corporation for the Development of Research and the Academy (CEDIA) opened the call for the second edition of the initiative "Stimulus of Mathematical Talent", better known as "Estalmat", a project that began in the Community of Madrid, and which, in less than five years, spread to several cities in Spain.

The goal will be to find children who have the talent for mathematics. Both enrollment and participation in the program have no cost, as the goal is to enhance children's skills.

How to participate?

All parents can register their children until September 20, through this platform. Those who sign up willThey will have a test on September 25. The 20 best scored will be chosen so that, from October, they begin with the workshops that will last for two years.

“What we are interested in is that as many audiences as possible participate because it has no cost. The experience we had with the first edition was pleasant because the boys from the rural parishes of Cuenca were able to be in “Estalmat”. It is good to know that there is mathematical talent everywhere, ”said Andrés Pérez.

Project history

In 1998, the Spaniard Miguel de Guzmán crystallized a project that he had sought to consolidate when he was a teacher: to have a program that continuously detects, guides and stimulates, and for two years, the talent for mathematics among children between 12 and 13 years old. .

With this slogan, Estímulo de Talento Matemático was born, better known as “Estalmat”, a project that began in the Community of Madrid, and which, in less than five years, spread to several cities in Spain.

The program has been very well received, to the point that the bases on which it is based have been replicated around the world, including Ecuador. In 2019, the Ecuadorian Corporation for the Development of Research and the Academy (CEDIA) had access to “Estalmat”, and upon learning of its operation, it replicated it in Azuay, with the support of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain, in a first call that initially took place in person and culminated, due to the health emergency, in virtual reality.

For the first edition of "Estalmat" 100 applications were received, however, only 20 children were chosen after they passed an aptitude test. “What we do is identify the children who have the talents in math. To what end? Well, foster those skills that are translated into future skills that make a project concrete ”, explained Javier Valdivieso, CEDIA's academic coordinator.

For Valdivieso and the people who are part of “Estalmat”, the great mathematicians became such when their teachers taught them differently. And it is precisely what was sought with "Estalmat": to enter the infinite field of mathematics with methods other than the traditional ones.

The relationship between music and mathematics, how a paradox works and how it can be solved with mathematics, the reason for geometric shapes in nature, are some of the topics that children access in 32 workshops, whose contents they are taught by teachers who have skills in specific areas.

Among the teachers who participated in the first edition was Andrés Pérez, who is also the coordinator of “Estalmat” and a professor at the University of Azuay. For him, the program helps to find curious children, children who are attracted to mathematics and who have a talent for solving problems.

"The boys who participate in" Estalmat "are curious, they are curious ... Generally, not all of us realize what is happening, the relationship between mathematics and everyday life, and there are other people who do, and" Estalmat "is for people who do notice mathematical peculiarities on a day-to-day basis," said Pérez.