Maths Students Scale Mount Olympus

The Australian Problem Solving Maths Olympiad (APSMO) is a competition which takes place throughout the year. Students sit for five separate exams with just five problems to answer each time…. sounds easy?

Well, it’s certainly not at all straightforward, especially as it is aimed at the extension maths students.

This year we had questions such as … Find the number of whole numbers between ∛2018 and √2018 … and … What is the least possible integer N such that 60/N <N? (with no calculators, of course).

There were over 10 000 students across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific entered in our Year 7 and 8 divisions, with individual prizes going to students in the top 25 per cent or better.

Congratulations go to the following students:

Year 7

• Special Achievement/Encouragement Award: Ava McCarthy
• Top 25%: Ashlee Park, Jamie Dwyer, Max Deffenti, James Bindra, Aditya Naik, Yuvi Chauhan, Tatiana Leon (top in class).

Year 8

• Special Achievement/Encouragement award: Ruben Yam
• Top 25%: Keanu Matsuura, Charlie Liu, Thomas Kilmartin, Riley Davenport, Amaani Basin, Joe Wright-Smith, Peter Osborne, Emily Mai, Kate Jordan, Anna Georgeson, Byron Morris.
• Top 10%: Ben Atia, Ruben Yam, Kei Naito, Jormina Ma, Nadia Von Papen, Jessica Nguyen, Marc Hagan, Lauren Chan, Jason Li.
• Top 2%: Cindy Xue, Aaron Lim, Nathalie Brown (all are top equal in class).
• The Year 8 team was second in Queensland and for the first time ever they were in the top 10% of teams entered in their division - so they also win a class prize.