This year’s math contests, hosted by the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Waterloo, offered a unique challenge for students as they moved from in-person to online events in tandem with government mandates. TCS “mathletes” persevered and showed great commitment in writing the contests, and all are to be congratulated. Students who earned scores in the top 25% worldwide were honoured with Distinction awards in a fun video created by the math department faculty!

The math contest season begins in the fall with the Canadian Intermediate and Senior Mathematics Challenges, which are written by students invited by the math department based on previous years’ results. Earning Distinction and school champion status on the intermediate test was Allen Tang, and on the Senior contest, Grace Lu.

The Grade 9 Pascal Contest was written by 12 students, including five eager mathematicians from the Junior School. Placing in the top 25% globally were Grade 9 students Eason Fan, Christina Jia and Celina Zhou, and Grade 8 students Landon Demrovsky, William Liu, Arjun Sharma and school champion Nicolas (Zhanchen) Shi.

Of the 13 students writing the Grade 10 Cayley Contest, five achieved Distinction: Jack Sprayson, Cindy Shui, Tae Kim, Tanay Langhe and school champion Srijan Velamuri. Some students also chose to further challenge themselves by writing the Grade 10 Galois problem-solving contest, with Tae Kim earning Distinction and school champion status.

On the Grade 11 Fermat Contest, congratulations go out to Sara Yang, who placed in the top 25% worldwide and was our school champion.

At the Grade 12 level, the math contests are particularly challenging and this year even more so as students wrote the Euclid Contest remotely, under alternate supervision, during the Spring Break in April. Students from Grades 10 through 12 chose to take on this challenge, and our school champion and Distinction winner was a Grade 10 student, Jack Sprayson, earning a top 25% placement amongst the more than 17,000 students writing this contest around the globe.

The math department would like to say a special note of congratulations to four graduating students who have been dedicated to, and achieved remarkable results on, the math contests throughout their TCS careers: Grace Lu, Anna Yang, Lily Lai and Zoe Fingas.

As we look ahead to next fall, a reminder that all students are welcome to take part in the annual math contests. Speak to your math teacher about how you can become involved!