Students Tackle Math Challenges in National Math Olympiad
December 17, 2014 by
This week, JPDS-NC students in grades 3-6 participated in the Math Olympiad. It is an international competition that takes place every year from November to March. Each month, we get five questions ranging in difficulty that need to be answered without calculators. There are never any multiple choice questions. Students need to use algebra, geometry and logic to solve them. Fourth grader Emmett thought the most interesting problem this month was about Pascal’s triangle; classmate Benjamin enjoyed the geometry question and Eliav preferred the algebra question.
For many students, this was not the first year participating in the Olympiad. The contest is open to mathletes from grades four to six, but some third graders can participate too. Sara commented that she was excited the first time she participated in the Math Olympiad as a third grader. Fourth grader Eliav added “last year, I was really nervous but then it wasn’t super hard and I could do a few of the questions. This year, I felt excited and confident. I liked it.” Fourth grader Emmet said, “The first time, I knew it was going to be fun because my sister had been in the Math Olympiad and she told me it was fun. This year, it was even better! I really like doing challenging math and logic problems.”
This month, there was an all-time-high of 12 perfect scores in the school. We wish good luck to all of our fellow mathletes at the next Math Olympiad, on December 17.
