New Zealand Maths Olympiad Committee online » News

2012 IMO team selection announcement

Chris — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:34:09 +0000

The team to represent New Zealand at the 2012 International Mathematical Olympiad, 4–16 July in Mar del Plata, Argentina, will consist of

James Allen, Kristin Senior School
Natalia Chen, St Cuthbert’s College
Byung-Cheol Cho, Auckland Grammar School
George Han, Westlake Boys’ High School
Hao Jeng, Hillcrest High School
Arun Chockalingam Shanmuganathan, Auckland International College,

with

Ian Seong, Macleans College

as non-travelling reserve. Congratulations to all!

2012 Asia-Pacific Mathematical Olympiad – preliminary results

Chris — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 04:43:00 +0000

Last month the training squad sat the Asia-Pacific Mathematical Olympiad. The top New Zealand results are as follows:

George Han (Westlake Boys’ High School): 14
Arun Chockalingam Shanmuganathan (Auckland International College): 14
Hao Jeng (Hillcrest High School): 10
Byung-Cheol Cho (Auckland Grammar School): 10
James Allen (Kristin School): 9
Vincent Qi (Onslow College): 8
Natalia Chen (St Cuthbert’s College): 7

The results will be finalised and awards made following co-ordination in the organising country, Japan.

2012 Australian Mathematical Olympiad – New Zealand results

Chris — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 03:23:26 +0000

New Zealand now participates in the Australian Mathematical Olympiad, held in February each year. The results of the 2012 AMO were announced last week, and the training squad has done very well, netting a total of eleven awards: one gold, four silver and six bronze.

Our award winners were:

Gold

James Allen (Kristin School)

Silver

Byung-Cheol Cho (Auckland Grammar School)
Arun Chockalingam Shanmuganathan (Auckland International College)
George Han (Westlake Boys’ High School)
Hao Jeng (Hillcrest High School)

Bronze

Natalia Chen (St Cuthbert’s College)
Ian Seong (Macleans College)
Peter Huxford (Newlands College)
Jaehwan Kim (King’s College)
Boyd Siripornpitak (Auckland International College)
Vincent Qi (Onslow College)

Congratulations to all! The result of the AMO, together with the results of the BMO2 and the upcoming Asia-Pacific Mathematical Olympiad, will be used to decide the team of six to represent New Zealand at the International Mathematical Olympiad in Argentina in July.

2012 British Mathematical Olympiad, Round two – New Zealand results

Chris — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 03:36:55 +0000

The training squad took part in Round Two of the British Mathematical Olympiad in January. Our top five students (scores out of 40) were

James Allen, Kristin Senior School (20)
Byung-Cheol Cho, Auckland Grammar School (20)
Hao Jeng, Hillcrest High School (14)
Natalia Chen, St Cuthberts College (11)
Ian Seong, Macleans College (10).

Congratulations to all, especially to James, Byung-Cheol, Hao and Natalia, who appear in the leading scores table on the BMOC site, with James and Byung-Cheol tied for seventh place with five others.

Our thanks go to the BMOS and the UKMT for allowing us to take part.

2012 IMO Squad

Chris — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:45:30 +0000

New Zealand’s training squad for the 2012 International Mathematical Olympiad was announced last week, at the end of our week-long training camp at Grafton Hall, University of Auckland. The final team of six to travel to Mar del Plata, Argentina will be decided in April.

The squad members are:

James Allen, Kristin Senior School
Jerry Chen, Auckland International College
Natalia Chen, St Andrew’s College, and now St Cuthbert’s College
Byung-Cheol Cho, Auckland Grammar School
George Han, Westlake Boys’ High School
Peter Huxford, Newlands College
Hao Jeng, Hillcrest High School
Jaehwan Kim, King’s College
Vincent Qi, Onslow College
Ian Seong, Burnside High School, and now Macleans College
Arun Chockalingam Shanmuganathan, Auckland International College
Boyd Siripornpitak, Auckland International College.

The team will be accompanied by:

Dr Christopher Tuffley, Massey University (Leader)
Dr Peter Nelson, Victoria University of Wellington (Deputy Leader)
Stephen McConnachie, Middleton Grange School (Manager).

2012 British Mathematical Olympiad, Round one – New Zealand results

Chris — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:16:33 +0000

Twenty of the 24 students selected for the 2012 NZMOC January Camp took part in Round One of the British Mathematical Olympiad earlier this month. The following students scored 50 or more out of 60, and appear on the leading scores table at the BMOC site:

James Allen, Kristin School (60)
Arun Shanmuganathan, Auckland International College (59)
George Han, Westlake Boys’ High School (57).

Congratulations to all, and a big thanks to the BMOC for allowing us to take part.

IMO 2011: Final results

Chris — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:25:36 +0000

The medal cuts were set yesterday morning at bronze 16, silver 22, gold 28. These weren’t quite the numbers we had been hoping for…but they still give us a fantastic result of two silver, two bronze, and two honourable mentions. These are New Zealand’s seventh and eighth silver medals; all those without medals get honourable mention (a first^*); and we maintained the standing of 29th country which we acheived last year. Oh, and don’t forget that we’re only two points behind Australia, and have a higher top score!

The afternoon was spent in an excursion to the central city with our team guide Marlisa Hommel, wandering Amsterdam’s many cobbled streets and bridges, and taking a boat ride on its network of canals. The excursion finished in a dinner at the NEMO science centre. The closing ceremony is this afternoon, followed by a party, and then we all say farewell and begin our journeys home tomorrow. It has been a wonderful (and fantastically organised!) IMO.

Full results can be found on the official IMO site.

(*) Yes, I know this isn’t strictly correct, because of the empty set! But it’s still a first, with that one exception.

IMO 2011: co-ordination, day two

Chris — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:39:30 +0000

Following co-ordination today the final scores for the 2011 IMO team are: James Allen, 27; Malcolm Granville, 17; Benedict Morrissey, 13; Arun Shanmuganathan, 22; Tom Yan, 14; Robert Zhang, 21. Our total score is 114 – one point behind the Netherlands, and two behind Australia – and each student has at least one perfect seven. We are now extremely interested in all three medal boundaries, which will be set at the final jury meeting, at 9am tomorrow.

Our two major co-ordinations today went extremely smoothly – in fact our meeting for problem 2 was over before it was even scheduled to begin! We went in a couple of minutes early, and made our proposal for the six scores; the co-ordinators had exactly the same scores in mind, for the same reasons, and we were out the door before the scheduled meeting time of 2:30. The meeting for problem 1 was not quite as quick, but just as smooth, and we got an unexpected bonus. Both we and the co-ordinators proposed 3 for one script, but it turned out that we had different third points in mind, and so the 3 became a 4. However, we were not so lucky with problems 5 and 6, and missed out on two points we’d hoped to gain. One of these, on problem 5, was extremely disappointing.

The team are currently on a field trip to the Hague; we’ve sent them the results by text, but look forward to congratulating them in person when they get back. Wish us luck for the meeting tomorrow!

IMO 2011: co-ordination, day one

Chris — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:08:59 +0000

We had some disappointments in co-ordination yesterday, with a flawed solution we thought deserved at least five or six out of seven knocked back to four; and another otherwise perfect solution to problem four knocked back to six, for not explicitly explaining why weights 2^1, 2^2, …, 2^{n-1} formed an instance of the problem for n-1 (just divide them all by two!). There was little to be done about this, however, as similar rulings had already been applied to other teams; and in fact the point off for no-division-by-two wasn’t entirely unexpected. Aside from that things have gone reasonably well, although we do still have one script for problem five rescheduled for later today.

The day began smoothly, with our appointment for problem three (the hardest problem of day one) scheduled for 9am. We told the co-ordinators that we didn’t think there were any points to be found in our students’ work, to which they agreed, but invited us to discuss their work anyway. There was really only one script where anything substantial had been written, and we explained why its proof that f(x)<=0 for all x (worth two points in the mark scheme) was incorrect. They agreed that “it is not allowed to make this mistake”, and we shook hands on six zeros.

Next up was problem four, at 2pm. The co-ordinators quickly agreed to three of the sevens we asked for, but as we’d expected wanted to look more closely at the other three scripts. One of these used an unusual construction to prove the required recurrence, and we were working our way through this together when our half hour appointment ran out. We were given a new appointment at 8pm, with the points for two scripts yet to be agreed on.

Problem five was next, at 5. We had what we thought were two 7s, a 6 (credit goes to Ilya for identifying this), a 3 and two 2s. All of this was agreed to readily enough, except for one of the 7s, which was written hurriedly during the last fifteen minutes of the exam, and had to be gone through carefully. After a time out to discuss it amongst themselves…and calling over the problem captain…they agreed that it was very good work, but offered six points. The deduction was for a spurious equation which made them question the student’s thinking in reaching the desired conclusion. It was false, but unnecessary, and if you just covered it up, there would be no dispute! Extremely reluctant to accept a 6 we rescheduled in order to review the script further, and today at 10:30 we hope to convince them he did know what he was doing.

8pm brought both bad news and good. It turned out there were other students with the same error as the one in our first script, and the co-ordinators for the problem had met to discuss how to handle it. To our great disappointment the decision there meant we could get only four point. For the second script? “I have good news”, said a co-ordinator, holding up his laptop and showing us some lines of code. “I have implemented his construction, and it works; what’s more, we think that his proof is correct. So we agree with you that he gets seven points.”

So, with three problems co-ordinated so far we have either 63 or 64 points, with at least five perfect sevens, spread between four students. Wish us luck today!

IMO 2011: Moving in to co-ordination

Chris — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:50:09 +0000

Greetings from the Netherlands! With the second day of competition having taken place yesterday we are now all together again in Amsterdam, and I’m free to write about the events so far. The IMO is moving into its next phase: Ilya and I will be busy with co-ordination, while the team and Stephen go on excursions. Today they will go cycling, while we will co-ordinate problem 3 in the morning, and problems 4 and 5 in the afternoon.

After a long but uneventful journey we arrvied in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam just over a week ago. We were met by Dutch leader Johan Konter, who helped Stephen buy the team tickets to Texel (pronounced “tessle”), where they would spend four days in joint training with the Dutch team. Johan and I then saw the team+Stephen+Ilya off on the first leg of their journey – getting to Texel involved several trains, buses, and a ferry – before catching a bus ourselves to the secret jury location, near Eindhoven. Despite the many connections the team’s trip to Texel apparently went smoothly, with the only incident as they boarded the train at Schiphol: once they were all safely on board we looked back at the door at the far end of the carriage, to see a lone suitcase sitting on the platform. Luckily we were able to get it on board too, before the train departed.

The opening ceremony took place on Sunday, with a troupe of acrobats keeping things lively during the parade of teams. This year’s parade was done by continent, and the Australian leader and I were tickled to find that collectively we made up “Oceania”. A link to video of the opening ceremony can currently be found on the IMO 2011 site; Australia comes on at 92:30 and NZ at 93:00.

The contest took place over the next two days. This year’s IMO will surely be remembered for two things: the “windmill problem”, a beautiful combinatorics problem by Geoff Smith (UK), which made it onto the paper as question 2; and for being the first time in many years that there were two combinatorics problems instead of two geometry, with the only geometry being question 6 (the hardest). It seems the windmill problem may have been harder than the jury thought, as many countries are only claiming a few full solutions; and the “missing” easy geometry may well have upset the fortunes of many contestants – perhaps including those of some of our own.

Now it all comes down to co-ordination. Of course we have our hopes, but I’d prefer to report facts than speculation, so watch this space! Some photos will also follow.