Waterloo Maths Contest Places 37 AIS Students on Global Stage

Dozens of MYP and DP students at AIS participated in The Waterloo Maths Contest this week. The contest is sponsored by The University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. “This thing is global. It’s not Waterloo, Belgium. It’s Waterloo, Canada,” according to Maths teacher Mr Ferguson. “It’s the University of Waterloo. It’s a big Maths-focused University. We’re talking thousands-upon-thousands of people entering this thing.” 

The contest is taken online and broken into three groups: Grade 9 students are entered in the Pascal Contest, Grade 10 students are entered in the Cayley Contest and students in Grade 11 participate in the Fermat Contest. Here at AIS, 10 students in Grade 9, 16 students in Grade 10 and 11 students in Grade 11 participated in the contest. That’s a total of 37 students. In 2020, two current Grade 11 students tied for 1st place at AIS: Ashlyn and Jack. We talked to them about their experience and what they are looking forward to this year.

Jack | Grade 11

“I personally like competitions in general. I think it’s really good to just have the platform to compete with people doing Maths from all around the world.  One thing I like in Maths is Algebra and my Grandad was a high school Maths teacher. Right now if I ask him any questions, he can still answer all the hard questions that I don’t get. All the hard questions, if I cannot get them, then he can just do it.  I do like competition. I’m good at numbers and Algebra, but not so good at Trigonometry and diagrams. I was doing the Morrisby test and for the topic ‘Numbers’ (Numerical) I got the top 1%. 

I’ve been at AIS since Grade 7. I was from a Chinese school and I was already doing Maths in the Chinese school and I think that Maths in Chinese is hard. So when I first came to this school the math was very easy for me at the time. But it becomes harder and harder, so I put more effort in. I am definitely learning new things right now. I’m studying Trigonometry: Imaginary numbers, Geometric series and Polynomials. 

It’s one of my future plans that I will consider Maths in the future, something like Economics, Business Management, something financial.”

Ashlyn | Grade 11

“I really like these contests because the questions are very puzzle-based and puzzle-related and those are the problems I really enjoy doing. I love different types of puzzles. I could spend hours at my desk doing different sudoku puzzles or logic puzzles, so that’s part of why I like these contests. Most of these problems you can find a short way to find the answer or you can do it the long way. I always have fun trying to find the short way to answer the question and get the right answer.

I’m definitely a Maths/Science person. So, right now I’m planning on going into the medical field, which isn’t as Maths-based, but I could see myself doing something Maths/Science-related like Pharmacy or Anesthesiology which is Maths and Medicine kind of combined. Right now, I am looking into being an Anesthesiologist. You have to calculate the amount of medicine needed and that’s kind of a quick puzzle thing for me. I am looking into Sports Medicine because outside of school, I really enjoy playing sports. I’m also looking into doing something with animals as well, possibly Veterinary Medicine.”

About the Contest

The Waterloo Maths Contest features 25 multiple choice questions and a total of 150 marks. Students have 60 minutes to complete the contest and some calculators are permitted. Mr Ferguson said the questions generally consist of, “Probability problems, real-life kind of problems, logic. It tends not to be questions requiring a lot of big depth or investigation because it’s meant to be quick. It’s different from the Maths most students tend to see day-to-day as part of the IB and that’s why some people like it a lot because it’s just a variety, just a change.” 

You can see contest examples and results from the past by clicking here.