Coding classes in Bavaria

Source: Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus, Abiturprüfung 2027, notice of 18 August 2025, BayMBl. 2025 Nr. 354, read 3 November 2026. Informatik is in neither exception list, so by the notice's own rule a written Informatik exam falls on 21 April 2027 at raised level and on 7 May 2027 at basic level; that reading is ours, and your school confirms the timetable. Additional oral exams must be finished by 18 June 2027.

import csv

stops, missing = [], 0
with open("MVV_Haltestellen_Report_s26.csv", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    for row in csv.DictReader(f, delimiter=";"):
        if row["WGS84 X"] == "" or row["WGS84 Y"] == "":
            missing += 1
            continue
        x = float(row["WGS84 X"].replace(",", "."))   # assumed: east
        y = float(row["WGS84 Y"].replace(",", "."))   # assumed: north
        stops.append((row["Name ohne Ort"], row["Ort"], x, y))

north = max(stops, key=lambda s: s[3])
print("Stops with coordinates:", len(stops), "without:", missing)
print("Northernmost stop?", north[0], north[1], north[3])

Passau sits in the far east of Bavaria, on the Austrian border, so "northernmost" is already suspicious. The number gives it away: 13.45 is a perfectly good longitude for Passau and an impossible latitude for anywhere in Bavaria, which lies between roughly 47 and 50.5 degrees north. Version 2 checks one stop everyone knows, Marienplatz in the centre of Munich, at about 48.14 degrees north and 11.58 degrees east.

marienplatz = [s for s in stops if s[0] == "Marienplatz" and s[1] == "München"][0]
print("Marienplatz X, Y:", marienplatz[2], marienplatz[3])
north = max(stops, key=lambda s: s[2])   # X is the latitude
south = min(stops, key=lambda s: s[2])
print("Northernmost:", north[0], north[1], north[2])
print("Southernmost:", south[0], south[1], south[2])

In this file, X holds the latitude and Y the longitude: the labels are the other way round from school maths. With that fixed, the northernmost stop is Nürnberg Hbf and the southernmost is Seefeld in Tirol, across the border in Austria, both reached by regional trains in the association's list. Version 1 also counted 888 stops with no coordinates at all, which a careful report mentions instead of hiding.

Version 3 asks a second question with a second trap: which five stops are closest to Marienplatz? Measuring straight in degrees treats a step east as long as a step north. At Munich's latitude it is not: a degree of longitude covers only about two thirds of the distance of a degree of latitude, because the lines of longitude meet at the poles. Multiplying by the cosine of the latitude fixes it.

import math
lat0, lon0 = marienplatz[2], marienplatz[3]

def degrees_apart(s):
    return math.hypot(s[2] - lat0, s[3] - lon0)

def km_apart(s):
    north_km = (s[2] - lat0) * 111.2
    east_km = (s[3] - lon0) * 111.2 * math.cos(math.radians(lat0))
    return math.hypot(north_km, east_km)

others = [s for s in stops if s is not marienplatz]
print("By degrees:", [s[0] for s in sorted(others, key=degrees_apart)[:5]])
print("By km:", [s[0] for s in sorted(others, key=km_apart)[:5]])
print("Within 1 km:", sum(1 for s in others if km_apart(s) <= 1))

Data: Haltestellenliste MVV, published by the Landeshauptstadt München, licence CC BY 4.0, credit Münchner Verkehrs- und Tarifverbund GmbH (MVV), downloaded 3 November 2026. All counts and rankings are our own calculations. The 111.2 km per degree is the usual round figure for one degree of latitude; good enough for ranking stops in a city, not for surveying.

1. Ages 8 to 10, no screen. Draw a grid on squared paper, mark your home and school, and write each as (across, up). Then swap the numbers by mistake and see where you land.
2. Ages 10 to 12, Scratch. Move a sprite to x and y values you type in, then swap them and watch it jump. Which way is north on the stage?
3. Ages 13 to 16, Python. Run Version 1, explain in one sentence why its answer cannot be right, then write Version 2 before you read ours.
4. Going further. Version 3 changes only the fifth place. Find the stop where the two methods disagree most, and explain the disagreement with a sketch.