New Zealand Maths Olympiad Committee online

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