This is the second year that we are doing an international math contest hosted by University of Waterloo in Canada. Last year, we had 20 students participated in grade 9, 10, and 11. This year, we have 41 students participating and it will take place on April 13th.
The Fryer, Galois and Hypatia (FGH) Contests are a unique opportunity for students to write a full-solution contest — a format that can help learners develop both problem-solving and communication skills. This fun, engaging contests inspire creative problem-solving as students tackle problems that build to a larger, more complex problem to solve in each question. Students prepared for the contest in their math classes so that they know what kind of problems to expect.
Generally, students find the contest to be rewarding, and challenging at the same time. They don’t really know what to expect when they started the contest. There are 4 problems in the contest, but they get harder and harder. After the contest, one student commented that she couldn’t believe how difficult the problem was and she spent over 30 minutes in the last problem. Another student felt that it wasn’t so hard but it has been a while so he didn’t quite remember the formula to crack the geometric problem. Most students felt that they had to recall many math theories in a logical and systematic way to tackle the problems.
Written by:
Aska Cheng, Iris Lai, Victoria Kao, and Bonnie Kuo
University of Waterloo Math Contest Participants
