Mathematical success for Concordians!

Concord mathematicians have been celebrating success in the Senior Mathematical Challenge and, for the top scoring students in that, the subsequent British Mathematical Olympiad.

An incredible 65 Concord students received a gold certificate from the UK Mathematics Trust, coming in the top 11% of entries from around the UK.

26 of the gold certificate winners scored highly enough to be invited to compete in follow on competitions. In these 12 were awarded Merit and 8 a Distinction including three who were awarded medals.

Only the top 100 students in the UK receive a medal and only the top 20 are awarded gold medals.

British Mathematical Olympiad medallists, Jocelyn, Hanks and Xingzhi were all delighted with their success.

Preparation for the Olympiad round largely focused on past paper and practice questions for all three medal winners.

Xingzhi who joined Concord in Form 3 and is now in 6.1 won a bronze medal. He enjoyed learning ways to approach problem solving: “I have been taking part in UKMT competitions since Form 3, such as the Intermediate Maths Challenge, Senior Maths Challenge, and Cayley, Hamilton and Maclaurin Olympiads”

“ I have learned to be open in my approach to questions, not stick on the wrong pathway which never leads me the solution.”

“BMO organisers tend to set very original questions that are hugely different from maths olympiads in other countries such as China or the USA. The organisers tend to set questions that are require you to solve them ad hoc instead of learning the ‘tricks’ to solve them. Though that is not to say it is not useful to still learn the general problem-solving principles, and I found a book titled Problem-Solving Strategies by Arthur Engel particularly useful in guiding me on how to tackle Olympiad-style questions.”

Hanks in 6.2 has been at Concord since Form 4, and this is, incredibly, his 4th BMO gold medal, he placed joint 4th in the country and will be competing as part of the UK team in Romania Master of Mathematics which will be held in Bucharest this month.

Jocelyn, who joined Concord in sixth form last September also won a bronze medal.

Concord Head of Mathematics, Dr Tom Phoenix congratulated the students: “I am hugely proud of all of the students remarkable success in these competitions. The Olympiad papers are extremely challenging exams and it is fantastic that they have managed to achieve such phenomenally high results.”