HICES Mathematics Tournament
This term, our maths department took on the mission to take a team of 2 Year 7 students (Emir Habiboglu and Tristan Lee) and 2 Year 8 students (Jason Chu and Jensen Mazza) to compete in the 2023 HICES Mathematics Tournament, at Oran Park Anglican College.
The day was filled with mathematics questions, discussions and solutions, designed to encourage thought and growth, while competing against 10 other schools from both, Sydney and Country areas.
The taxi left The McDonald College at 7:15am with the boys and Mr Scott, all buzzing with excitement. The competition was divided into 4 sections.
- Some warmup questions (these did not count for points towards the competition)
To get the brains going students had to solve some combinatorial questions such as “if a lock has three tumblers and each tumbler has 0 – 39 numbers, how many combinations are possible? (64 000)”
- The Swiss challenge.
Teams were competing in pairs and had to deduce the number of a given Linear or Quadratic pattern.
- Group contest.
The team was given 42 questions and had 45 minutes to get as many correct solutions as possible, the questions could be distributed among the team in any order.
- The relay competition
The team had to alternate between Year 7 and Year 8 solving a question, these were very challenging and pushed our boys to their limits. One of the student’s favourite questions was:
A single piece of wire is folded to form a square with area 225 cm2. The wire is straightened, cut into pieces of equal length, and those pieces fastened together to form the frame of a cube. If no wire is wasted, find the volume enclosed by the cube, in cubic centimetres. (Answer: 125 cm3)
At the end of the day, our young mathematicians left with a greater appreciation of Mathematics, as well as picking up a few new math tricks, which in itself counted as a big win.
