Bulgarian students have had numerous successes in world Olympiads in mathematics, informatics, linguistics, etc. Recently, Bulgaria earned a gold medal at the European Statistics Competition. The competition for high school students is organized by the European Commission’s statistical office- Eurostat. This year the teams were asked to make a two-minute video on the topic of the environment. Contestants had to present their findings on what official statistics tell about their environment in their country/region.

Students from the National Trade and Banking High School in Sofia led by Dr. Vasil Bozev, who also lectures at the University of National and World Economy (UNWE), participated at the competition in the senior age group (16-18). The three main participants Gabriela Atanasova, Viktor Hekimov and Martin Kostadinov embarked on the task with the desire to represent Bulgaria in the best possible way. They won the first prize in competition with more than 17,000 school-goers from 19 European countries.

• Bulgarian secondary school students win first prize at European Statistics Competition

Today (June 27), Gabriela, Martin and Viktor are in the Spanish capital Madrid to receive their award in person.

“In the beginning, we were not confident that we were going to win the competition, because we didn’t know our rivals, says Martin Kostadinov.  –However, we imagined that we were flying to Madrid to receive our award”, the young man said excitedly for the BNR. – We were trying to see the future and how far we wanted to go and we only had to walk on the road to victory. We wanted to present Bulgaria in the most comprehensive and understandable manner, so that everyone would remember this information. We came up with the idea about the video in the very beginning. However, we made several changes later. I fully dedicated myself to the task. Everyone had their own ideas and we worked as a team. We collected the most important data, in order to draw the appropriate conclusions. Beyond statistics, our video containing footage of nature and urban environment has strengthened our conviction that although Bulgaria’s territory is not that big, the country has wonderful nature. It doesn’t even need advertising. Once you see this country, you will return again and again. We ourselves want to discover more and more fascinating views, such as those captured in the video. Few countries have what Bulgaria has. However, there is still a lot to be done. For instance, we need to put more efforts into landscaping to address air pollution”.

The students are very grateful to their mentor Dr. Vasil Bozev. In addition to the successful performance at similar competitions, the school-goers aim to score good marks in all subjects. Distance learning helped them gain more knowledge.

 “For us statistics is something new. It is taught after the 10th grade. That is why we joined this competition- Viktor Hekimov, who is also part of the successful team, clarifies. – I would love to continue using statistics in the future. This is a very useful tool that leads to key findings and reveals important trends.”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov

Photos: YouTube, esc2022.eu