A group of our seniors created a mathematical formula to estimate the cost, in 'reais,' to complete the "FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022" sticker album
With the 2022 World Cup approaching, our seniors Bernardo Monteiro, Arthur Choi Braga, and Guilherme Mendes, with their High School math teacher, Victor Jatobá, developed a project inspired by the “FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022” sticker album. They set out to determine the total estimated value to complete the World Cup album. The project began in August when the album and stickers were officially launched in Brazil.
The students worked with probability and expected value concepts. Their goal was to elaborate a formula capable of finding the value of how much it would cost to complete the sticker album. The formula considers factors such as the value of a single sticker and the total number of stickers in the album. After three months, the students reached the final value of R$ 3,700.99.
The project was developed when buying the World Cup album and exchanging stickers reached their peak. According to the students, those were the main reasons that encouraged them to finish their work with precision.
“We started the project when a lot of news was going around about how much it would cost to buy the stickers to complete the album. At the end of the project, we found out that most of the news was fake. So, what struck me most was being able to do a project, understanding what mathematical principles apply to it, and drawing our own conclusions about buying the stickers!”
“For me, the idea was innovative and fun. We started the project at a time when everyone was shocked by the prices of the stickers, guessing how much it would cost to complete. So, not only did we remove this doubt, but we did it interactively and differently,” says student Guilherme Mendes.
One of the work’s inspirations was to identify published news that incorrectly quoted the final value. According to Bernardo Monteiro, the project was a way to know the correct value and help him buy and exchange his stickers.
“We were able to discover and adapt our formula with something that already existed only incorrectly, and I think making this adaptation was cool. But for me, the most complicated part was also the most fun! It was making the formula, readjusting it, and finishing the job with precision.”
The result was not the most significant prize in the opinion of their teacher, Victor. Instead, it was seeing the students’ progress and watching them develop their problem-solving abilities.
“I was surprised how independently they did their work! Seeing them identify a problem and work together to solve it was great. I could tell that as they exchanged and bought stickers, they brought the project to life and achieved their goals.”
Comments