Math Buffs United

After a 22-student strong turnout at the American Mathematics Competition (grades 10-12) on February 2, it was our juniors’ turn at the Math Challengers Competition (MCC) on February 13, when eighteen grades 8 and 9 students made the trek to Simon Fraser University to participate in the prestigious math competition. Seriously, it’s a thing. At 8:30am, the lecture halls were filled with hundreds of students from independent and public schools. After all, what better way to spend a rainy Saturday than to solve math problems? 

After lunch, results were announced for the final face-off round, in which the top 10 students would compete against each other in a Jeopardy-style battle. Tension was high—as was the disbelief surrounding how fast these kids solved the problems. Often, the official didn’t have a chance to finish reading the question before a buzzer sounded!

When our own Samuel Gan, rocking a double-breasted trench coat, was named 4th overall in the preliminary rounds, he excitedly took his place among the other math whizzes and defeated the 5th-ranked student 2-0 in a best of three. Unfortunately, Samuel incorrectly answered the first question in his battle against the #3-ranked student and lost 3-0 in this best of five bout. In the final match, the #1-ranked student swept the competition.

At the end, our two grade 8 teams and one grade 9 team finished well ahead of many competitors, and our grade 9 team of Tory Tan, Kelvin Jiang, Samuel Gan, Belle Xu and Basil Wang (pictured) finished 3rd overall and qualified for provincials. All students represented WPGA with class and pride.

Congratulations to these math warriors on a job well done—and for making math fun!