Key Results

Collaboration project results in a new book

SDU Mechatronics is collaborating with House of Science and four upper secondary schools (gymnasiums) in Sønderborg on a project that offers particularly motivated high-school students the opportunity to come to the university to study mathematics beyond the standard high-school curriculum. The first cohort of students completed the programme in spring 2022, and the teaching material—developed specifically for this purpose by Associate Professor Bjarne Schmidt—has since been expanded, refined, and is now published as a book by the Danish Mathematics Teachers’ Association Publishing House.

The book is intended as inspiration both for high-school teachers who wish to go slightly beyond the curriculum and for students who want to write their final-year (3.g) project in mathematics, explains Bjarne Schmidt.
He himself greatly enjoyed teaching the high-school students in the spring and continues with a smile:

Students who arrive at SDU at 3:30 p.m. after a long school day in high school and then eagerly work on mathematics until 5:15 p.m. are probably the best students a teacher could wish for.

The book is titled Matrix Calculations with Applications and introduces the fundamentals of matrix construction and computation while demonstrating a wide range of applications. These include, for example, how Google ranks the most relevant links at the top of search results, as well as how matrix methods are used in image optimization and in modelling the spread of an epidemic.

The collaboration project is called MIME (Master Class in Innovation, Math and Economics) and is funded by the Region of Southern Denmark for the period 2021–24. As a result, two additional cohorts of high-school students will have the opportunity to visit SDU in Sønderborg to further stimulate their interest in mathematics.

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