Overcoming four sets of challenges added up to success for four mathematicians from The Armidale School, who took out the University of New England’s Year 8 Maths competition on Friday.
The foursome were one of two TAS teams which competed alongside 58 others, made up of 200 students from 40 secondary schools from Armidale, Tamworth, Inverell, Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour. Throughout the day students completed various tasks and challenges, the first consisting of difficult maths equations they competed as a team and the second, a ‘head to head’ challenge.
“Each team went up against others and competed to figure out rules and ‘patterns of conversion’ before the others. This was an individual challenge for everyone involved as no one could communicate the rule otherwise the other team would figure it out,” Piymu Ekanayake said.
“The third challenge was the clue challenge, where students had to give their teammates clues as to what the maths ‘rule’ was so that they then could combine all the rules and get the answer.”
For the fourth challenge, teams could choose between solving questions worth two points, three points or four points within a certain time, so had to assess the risk and opportunity of completion.
“The head-to-head was the best,” said Henry Mitchell, a member of the winning team
“The day was good fun, with a great variety of challenges.”
TAS students Alexander Gibson, Jack Van Roy, Henry Mitchell and Piyumi Ekanayake were the champion team at UNE Year 8 Maths Day
