Established in Vienna in 1993, the International Schools Mathematics Teacher Foundation (ISMTF) has grown to become a vibrant network of approximately 70 international schools spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Munich International School is a member school, participating in and hosting global mathematics competitions each year. In recent years, competitions have been virtual; however, this past week, MIS students traveled to The Hague and Vienna to compete with hundreds of other international school students.
If you've ever wondered what a math competition involves, take for example last year's ISMTF competition, hosted here at MIS. In the spring of 2023, MIS hosted the ISMTF Middle School Mathematics competition. We invited 162 students from 25 international schools around Europe and the Middle East. The competition involved students working in teams of three to solve challenging mathematics problems. In the afternoon, students worked with special guest, Dr. James Grime on activities involving Game Strategy & Theory. He presented them with the possibility of winning a prize if they could beat him at any of his games. While many tried; no one succeeded, but everyone had a great time and learned some unbeatable strategies. A second highlight of the afternoon was learning how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. These workshops were led by MIS student and champion Cubing competitor, Tanish Dhiman and his team! The third activity was in Code Breaking rooms where students solved codes, many of which were based on codes used in history such as the Caesar cipher and a modified version of the Enigma machine.
This year’s Junior ISMTF competition was in Vienna. There were 192 competitors, competing in 8 rounds of individual events and the afternoon involved 6 rounds of team competition. Representing MIS was Mariia Petrova, Ruiming Zheng, Katharina Alt, David Comor, Jordan Toogood, and Yul Lee. A special mention to Ruiming who placed 21st overall and Mariia Petrova who came in 13th overall. The whole team well-deserved their evening of ice staking in central Vienna after an intense day of focus and challenge.
The Seniors competed last week in the Hague's ISMTF competition. MIS was represented by Roman Shkredov, Sosuke Ishizu, Shaurya Kumar Ranjan, Myra Singh, Lukas Emander, and Natalia Ershova. They were up against 182 students from 30 different schools. The students all placed well, but an especially impressive result was from Natalia who placed 16th overall. In the teams' event rounds, Roman, Natalia, and Lukas placed 7th out of 61 teams. At the end of an intense day of competition, the MIS Mathletes joined many other schools' teams for an evening of bowling.
ISMTF math tournaments are a great mix of competition and fun. If you enjoy solving interesting and challenging mathematics problems, talk to Senior School Math Teacher and Head of Department, Philip Kurbis or your mathematics teacher about how to join the team.
*A special thanks to the MIS Science Inspiration Fund for supporting this activity and making it possible for MIS to compete in the competitions.