On 11-11-22 Marjolein Kool of the Hogeschool Utrecht is organizing the Bartjens calculation dictation. Really something for those, like me, who immediately added two dashes in their minds to change that beautiful date into the sum 11+11=22. Kool is a senior lecturer in arithmetic, mathematics and didactics, plus a creditable light verse poet. She once made together with Drs. P the fantastic poetry collection Wisdom and Nature Lyrics.
Next week Kool will present current sums that she reads out as if in a dictation, after which the participants have to calculate the answers at lightning speed. There is a meeting in Utrecht for adults and an online version for primary school students. This is one of the exercises: ‘A journalist notes the number of passengers queuing at Schiphol. He accidentally puts one too many behind that number. This increases the number by 198,000. What number should the journalist have written down?’
A few weeks later, on November 26, the Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal can be heard on NPO Radio 1. And suddenly I wondered: what would happen if you combine those two dictations? That you do not only have to solve the sums, but also write them correctly and that they are then full of delicious dictation words? Then you would get something like this:
1. In order to prevent bankruptcies in the sauna sector, a price ceiling is introduced for electricity as an ad hoc solution. A rate of 40 cents per kilowatt hour applies to the first 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, above that the commercial rate of 69 cents per kilowatt hour applies. A wellness center covered an annual use of 7,219 kilowatt hours. How much does this center pay per year for electricity?
2. On Christmas Day, a bomb mother receives a przewalski horse as a gift from a balalaika player friend. This minuscule looking horse, however, weighs 159 kilograms more than the ecstatic mother. The woman and horse together weigh 285 kilograms. You can count on an A4 page: what is the weight of this chic Przewalski horse?
3. The nitrogen directive must be updated coûte que coûte to prevent too much eutrophication in the vast bocage landscape. With a surplus of nutrients, algae can double themselves every day. A pond is filled with such exponentially increasing algae on day 24. What percentage of the original pico bello pond was equipped with algae on day 12?
4. Ever since Elon Musk put Twitter boss on his resume, the number of users of the Mastodon app has been growing rapidly. The Netherlands currently has 2.9 million Twitter users. Hypothetically, 10 percent of them could switch irritably to Mastodon every day. Suppose for a moment that it is not hypothetical and that 10 percent of the Dutch users remaining at that time pass conscientiously every day. How many smart people will switch on day five?
The answers: exercise assignment: 22,000 people in line, assignment 1: 4,111.11 euros, assignment 2: 222 kilos, assignment 3: 0.024 percent, assignment 4: 190,269 switchers.
The correct spelling of the exercises can be disputed, but whoever did the same as our final editors will in any case receive full marks.