Students from Perth Modern School flexed their mathematical muscles taking out the top individual and team prizes in WA’s Junior Maths Olympiad hosted by The University of Western Australia.
The competition, for Year 7 to 9 students, bans calculators and has an emphasis on ‘brains only’ with an aim to challenge, inspire and nurture a love of mathematics while identifying the top young students in the State.
The first part of the competition involved an individual paper, which all participants completed at their school on Tuesday 15 September.
Out of nearly 400 competitors, Jimmy Liang was the overall individual winner and the most outstanding Year 8 student, while Sally Huang was best Year 9 student and Mason Wang best Year 7 student.
The second part of the competition was a team paper about knight moves on a chessboard and students completed it at the UWA Ezone Student Hub on Saturday 19 September.
Of the 78 teams that competed from 19 schools, the most outstanding was a Year 8 team that included Danil Kazanov, Boan Li, Jeremy Wang and Jimmy Liang.
Before the prize ceremony, four UWA PhD students, Yuval Berman, Daisy Evans, Daniel Claassen and Kaylee Molin, gave an insight into the maths they use on a daily basis, including how mathematics is applied to healthcare and the studies of nonlinear dynamics and chaos.
The PhD student presentations provided a fun, accessible way for the younger students to see that mathematics does not end at high school and offered an opportunity for them to get excited about what they can do with mathematics at university.
Hosted by UWA since 1999, the competition was sponsored by UWA, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University, the Australian Maths Trust, the WA State Department of Education, Mathematical Association of Western Australia, Data Analysis Australia, New Edition Bookshop, Optiver and Casio.
Questions, solutions and full list of award recipients can be found here.
Image top: Mason Wang (best Year 7) Jeremy Wang (tied second place and best team) Danil Kazanov (tied second place and best team) Jeremy Lim (tied second place) Boan Li (tied second place and best team) Jimmy Liang (best Year 8, overall winner and best team) Sally Huang (best Year 9).