Maths @ GEC

School Maths Olympics

School Maths Olympics is the highlight of Maths at GEC in this newsletter edition.  I really feel proud of the students who entered this competition, participated and excelled in giving their best and had fun in solving the problems given to them by working as a team.

Five 8B students Adi Reddycharla, Alexander Tari, Akshya Ajbani, David Scott and Jamie Katic participated in an interschool competition called School Maths Olympics (SMO) run by the University of Melbourne students. 

The competition was held online on Sunday 22nd August from 1:30pm to 4:30pm. There were 40 teams in total from many different schools participating in this competition, who were all put into breakout rooms to work on 25 problems posted to them.  They were given an hour to solve those problems.  Our students were very enthusiastic from the beginning till the end, collaborating and communicating effectively and solved 11 questions out of 25. I was amazed at their enthusiasm, the way they collaborated and communicated their thinking to each other. Though they did not win any prize, I am sure this would have been a wonderful learning experience for them.

Here is what some of them said about their experience:

“The Schools Maths Olympics was really fun to be a part of and I had a really nice experience. The questions were really tough, though we did end up getting 11 out of 25 answers correct, which I feel was a brilliant effort from our team. Funny thing was that there were a few easy questions which we forgot something as simple as a capital letter and there were tough questions that we guessed and got correct. I mean estimated. As a whole, I'm really happy that I got to be a part of it and had lots of fun.” – Adi 8B

“Participating in the SMO was a great experience for all of the challenging problems we faced as a team and also the many mathematical skills we developed while practicing for the competition. It was a lot of fun to discuss our thinking and share our ideas in a meeting while completing the challenge as well. I would encourage anyone who has a passion for maths to take part in this competition in the future.” – Jamie 8B

“I really enjoyed the SMO, as it gave me an extension challenge in maths. Even if some of the questions were way out of our range, we still kept thinking about it. The team had fun working together and I hope next year there will be more people joining!” – Alex 8B

Arivu Kumaran

Head of Maths