On February 18th, 15 6th and 7th grade girls (ages 11-12 years old) from two public primary schools in Poland participated in an IGNITE event. The girls were from number 2 – Szkoła Podstawowa im. Bolesława Prusa in Kałuszyn, ul. Pocztowa 4, 05-310 Kałuszyn and Primary School no. 3 im. Mikołaja Kopernika in Giżycko-.
The girls met an expert in the field of mathematics! Ms. Dominika Mońka works at the Warsaw University of Technology in the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science.
Ms. Dominika told her story, starting from when she was a little girl. She was fascinated by theatre and her dream was to become an actress. As a teenager, she liked to read and devoted her free time to books. Her father often asked her about mathematics and gave her logical tests to solve. This gave her an impulse and she found that mathematics was quite interesting!
Ms. Dominika told the girls that mathematics is everywhere and can be used in different fields, for example: banking, engineering, informatics, cinematography, etc.
Her specialization is statistics. She provided participants with a simple example of statistics, to show where this specialization could be useful. Airlines need statisticians to count how many tickets they can sell. If the number of tickets exceeds the number of seats on a plane, it’s because statisticians estimated how many people won’t actually show up to board the plane. Ms. Dominika showed the girls how much fun it is to study math and how much creativity is involved!
University gave her an opportunity to realize her dream from childhood. Since there was a theatre group at her University, she and her colleagues made movies for children where they used Lego blocks to explain mathematics. Now, Ms. Dominika is in the international group of people working on a platform that explains mathematics in an easy way. She gave the girls interesting tests and quizzes to show how this subject can be useful and fun!
I would like to thank Ms. Dominika Mońka, who showed that mathematics can be interesting and fun. Special thanks to Ms. Krystyna Wasiluk and Ewa Ładna who coordinated the groups and encouraged the girls to develop their passions. I would also like to thank Cathi and Becky for their constant support.
After attending this event:
82%
of students want to continue attending IGNITE Worldwide events
64%
of students want to study harder to attend college and further their education
Here’s what the students thought of the event:
“Thanks to this event I liked mathematics more!”
“Despite the fact that she works as a mathematician, she also has artistic activities!”
“I liked everything!“