New Zealand Maths Olympiad Committee online

The March problems are intended to help students prepare for the 2010 camp selection problems, used to choose students to attend our week-long residential training camp in Christchurch in January.

In recent years the camp selection problems have been known as the “September Problems”, as they were made available in September. This year we’re going to trial moving the selection problems earlier in the year, releasing them in July and moving the due date to August. This will allow more time for pre-camp training, building up to Round One of the British Mathematical Olympiad in December.

The solutions will be posted in about two month’s time, but can be obtained before then by email if you write to me with evidence that you’ve tried the problems seriously.

Good luck!

- Chris

(Looking for something more challenging? Try the squad number theory assignment.)

This year’s team selection will be based on three competitions (the BMO2, the AMO, and the APMO) and four assignments: one on each of the four Olympiad areas of algebra, combinatorics, geometry and number theory.

Here is the squad’s first assignment, on number theory. The problems are taken from a variety of sources; these will be acknowledged in the solutions, which I’ll post in a month’s time, together with the second assignment. Following our usual practice, you can get the solutions before then if you write to me with evidence that you’ve made a serious attempt.

Enjoy!

- Chris

A number of students from New Zealand recently took part in round 1 of the British Mathematics Olympiad. Results will be available later in December, or early in January. In the mean time you might enjoy looking at the problems, or possibly the solutions (in video form) featuring a mystery guest star in question 6.

Michael

Thank you to everyone who participated in the September problems. We had a large number of high quality entries this year, which will give us an excellent pool from which to select the participants for January’s camp in Christchurch. Let me just take this opportunity to remind you that we treat these problems as a filter rather than a competition. In other words we will not be releasing scores or rankings, simply using them to make the decision about whom to invite to the camp. Anyhow, a number of you have expressed interest in seeing the solutions, so here they are.

Do keep in mind that these are only possible solutions. For maths problems of this type, there is generally more than one correct path (but, unfortunately also many more incorrect paths!) towards a solution. You may well have found (or thought you found) a better one. The evaluation of your papers is done on their individual merits, not by comparison to any sort of a standard or official solution.

Michael

Well, it may not attract the same amount of press that the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau does, but this year’s September problems which we use to select students to attend camp in January are now available.

Please read the instructions and registration document carefully (.doc version). In particular, note that you are to spend at most 10 days working on the problems, and not to get outside aid of any sort (including, it should be needless to say, from the internet).

Please note also that these problems are not a competition in the ordinary sense of the word. We use them simply as a filter to determine the 24 students to invite to camp. In particular, within that 24 or outside that 24 we don’t rank the outcomes.

Finally, good luck with the problems!

Michael

Here are the July problems. Unfortunately, we’re unable to post the May Solutions at this point: we’re in Europe for the 2009 IMO, and don’t seem to have the solutions on our laptops. We’ll post the solutions on our return.

Have fun, and keep those solutions coming in!

Update, 30th July: Here at last are the May solutions. Apologies for the delay.