Australia’s brightest mathematical students are well underway in their preparations to become part of the select team who will compete in the global Mathematics Olympiad.
A ten-day camp selection camp is currently underway in Sydney, with twenty-five students undertaking a series of exams and creative theory exercises in an attempt to become of the six that will be selected to represent Australia when they compete in Thailand later this year.
Alex Gunning, a seventeen-year-old boy from Melbourne, is one of the front-runners. The Glen Waverley student achieved a near-unprecdiented perfect score in the competition last year, winning a gold medal and tying for first place.
“It’s very nice to be challenged by these mathematical problems, to have to think about something where the answer isn’t obvious,” Alex said.
Alex also explained that the types of questions potential competitors faced were vastly different to those given within a school setting. “The main problem with them is not that they’re overly complex or technical, it’s that the ideas behind them are very hard to come up with,” Alex said.
Also from Melbourne is sixteen-year-old Jeremy Yip from Trinity Grammar School in Melbourne. “By the end of the camp it’s very intense, everyone’s trying their best, everyone’s going to bed early so they can be fully rested for their exams, and that’s when everyone becomes nervous,” he said.
Like Alex, he also said that the problems faced by the young hopefuls are complex and require creative thinking.
“The problem solving is now a bit more about using your own intuition, using your own methods, finding your own ways to find out things,” Jeremy said.
“You can only do so much training here.”
The selected students won’t find out until June if they’ve made the Australian team, but we wish them all the best.
This post originally appeared on ABC News
