New Zealand Maths Olympiad Committee online

With one IMO concluded – and so successfully for New Zealand! – it’s time to start thinking about the next.

Our first step in choosing the team to represent New Zealand at the 2011 IMO in Amsterdam is to choose 24 students to attend a week long training camp in Christchurch in January. These students will be chosen using the 2010 Camp Selection Problems (pdf, 105kb). Read more »

On Monday Ilya and I finally saw the team and May again, at the Kazanat Equestrian Sports Complex, where we were treated to a display of some traditional Kazakh games. The closing ceremony was held yesterday, and we begin our journey home today; layovers in Almaty and then Dubai mean we arrive back in New Zealand on Saturday.

Pictures follow.

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The medal cut offs were set this evening at bronze 15, silver 21, gold 27, giving us everything we could have hoped for: two silver medals, for Malcolm and Tom, and four bronze medals, for Stephen, Edward, Robert and Scott. We are ranked 29th out of 96 countries, giving us a relative ranking of 70%, our highest to date, and we will be bringing home six medals for the first time ever, as well as our fifth and sixth silvers. This has been a fantastic year for the New Zealand IMO team.

We’re unable to communicate directly with the team at present – they’re still 240km away at Baldauren, and our phones don’t have service – but shortly after the medal cutoffs were decided the UK deputy showed us a text from his team, saying “New Zealand is ecstatic, they’re celebrating with Patiakin” (a member of their team). They will be transferred back to Astana tomorrow, and we’re looking forward to seeing them again and congratulating them then.

Full results for the 2010 IMO can be found on imo-official.org.

After a marathon final session that spent over two hours on a single script, we finally completed co-ordination at about 7:15 this evening. We were the very last team to do so. We’re extremely happy with how the team have done: their scores are

• Malcolm Granville (Auckland Grammar School), 22
• Stephen Mackereth (King’s College), 16
• Yuan (Edward) Wang (Hillcrest High School), 15
• Tom Yan (Auckland Grammar School), 21
• Robert Zhang (Auckland Grammar School), 16
• Sicong Zhang (Auckland International College), 16

for a total of 106 points – about 6 or so points behind the United Kingdom, and 22 points behind Australia. The team each have a perfect score on at least one problem; three have perfect scores on two, and two have perfect scores on three. The Dutch team all have two perfect scores each, and a total of 94 points.

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Today we co-ordinated the results of two problems, and rescheduled meetings for two others until tomorrow, after agreeing on the marks for three out of six students at each one. Read more »

Much has taken place in the week since Quintijn, Johan and I flew to Almaty for the jury meetings. Read more »