Four Maties mathematics and engineering students ended in the top 20 of the 250 tertiary students who participated in the annual South African Tertiary Mathematics Olympiad held in August.
Petri-Johan Last, a third year engineering student at Stellenbosch University, came second overall, while Sarah Selkirk, a first-year mathematics students, came fifth. Two first year engineering students, René Spoerer and Jaison Zachariah, share the eighth and fifteenth places with other students.
The students had two hours to solve 20 problems. The winner, a student from Cape Town University, scored 13 out of 20. Petri-Johan’s score was 11 out of 20. Most of the 250 students who participated could only solve two to three problems.
Dr. Dirk Basson, a lecturer in the Mathematics Division at Stellenbosch University and one of the organisers, says the Olympiads are fun, with the focus on ingenuity rather than subject knowledge: “The Olympiads consist of questions which test mathematical problem solving skills and usually require ingenuity more than knowledge to solve.”
Petri-Johan, who graduated from Framesby High School in Port Elizabeth, says he likes the type of problems they have to solve, as it requires both analytical and mathematical skills: “Coming from the Eastern Cape, we often did not have the chance to compete on provincial level,” he adds.
Sarah, a former learner of Hudson Park High School in East London, says she plans to continue with mathematics until she earns a PhD.
Prof. Stephan Wagner, also from the Mathematics Division, says the competition is open to all undergraduate students who have not been studying for more than four years: “The questions are elementary and can involve abstract algebra, combinatorics, graph theory or even topology. But no extensive theoretical knowledge that would go beyond first year mathematics is necessary. Most of the time the problems will only require elementary (high school level) mathematics.”
To have a look at this year’s problems (and the solutions) go to http://math.sun.ac.za/~swagner/TMO/
On the photo, Petri-Johan Last, Dr Dirk Basson and Sarah Selkirk
