Emanuel students are hard core
Sydney’s Emanuel School students have taken out the Championship at the Heads of Independent Co-Educational Schools (HICES) annual Hard Core Maths Day.
Jessica Lowy, Beau Glass, and Shasha Baskin
The Hard Core Maths Day involves 26 schools which each enter a group of talented mathematicians for an intense day of problem solving. Year 7 Emanuel student Jessica Lowy, along with Sasha Baskin and Beau Glass from Year 8, participated in the three-round competition. They not only needed to understand what the questions were asking of them, but had to use their mathematical knowledge, logic and powers of deduction to solve the problems, which ranged from algebraic and geometry questions, to word problems and finding patterns in numbers.
There were also a number of rounds where students mixed with others from different schools and solved problems collaboratively.
Sasha Baskin commented that she enjoyed the Swiss Challenge the most. “We had to discover a number pattern and fill in the next number in that pattern. The adrenalin rush from the Challenge was a great motivator for the Mathematical Relay and contributed to our exhilaration at the end of the day.”
The Mathematical Relay called on the students to work independently in their Year groups. The students had to wait for each other to solve the problem before they could move to the next question.
Alice Henry, High School Mathematics teacher, who accompanied the students, said: “I was so proud of how the students threw themselves into this competition, proving themselves to be Hard Core Mathematicians. I was most impressed by the way they worked with other students and were willing to collaborate with people they had never met”.
Anne Hastings, Principal, commented: “The Hard Core Maths Challenge reinforced the students’ classroom learning which is informed by our rich culture of critical thinking. The questions that were posed involved an ability to see beyond what was written on the page. We are all exceptionally proud of our students.”
