"We group students of different specialties together to optimize their performance. Īpart from taking part as individuals, students were also required to form groups of four for the team competition. In 2013, Zhang was among the coaches who led a group of about 40 students to the US for the Exeter Math Club Competition (EMCC) of the Phillips Exeter Academy. One should be familiar with English math vocabulary, said Li.įor Chinese students fortunate enough to go to the US to compete in math contests on elite campuses, the importance of team work is another lesson. Li became accustomed to the American style of posing math problems by reading and practicing.Ī good understanding of the English language is also vital for entering these competitions. Preparation for the AMC requires a lot of self study. "The questions were set in intriguing circumstances, different to China's questions which usually follow a rigid format." "It was a fresh and interesting experience because it was quite different from China's math contests," said Li. At the time, all his classmates were encouraged by teachers to enter the competition. Li Aolong, a math enthusiast, entered the AMC in 2011 when he was a high school student at Sun Weigang Math Experimental Class at Beijing No.22 Middle School. "The achievements in these contests demonstrate students' excellent academic ability, increasing their opportunities for admission to America's elite academies and colleges." "An increasing number of parents and students in Beijing have been drawn to math contests in the US," said Zhang. Zhang is a young coach working with the Beijing Mathematical School Team, an organization devoted to honing the math brains at middle school, by preparing students for domestic and international competitions. He also helps his students understand the questions which were originally written in English, by breaking down the sentence structure and decoding the grammar.
Standing in front of more than 20 teenagers in a classroom in Haidian district, a hub of China's best colleges and middle schools, Zhang Mingyu attempts to decode and elaborate on a question posed by the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC). We’d love to feature your opinions and ideas on this blog.Chinese students have increasingly become interested in participating in American math contests organized by elite institutions. If you would like to be interviewed about your ideas, experiences and philosophy regarding teaching mathematics then please contact us. We are very interested to talk with past scholars, existing scholars and anyone who is involved in maths teaching. We are hoping to launch year five of the Maths Scholars scheme in October and urge anyone who is considering teaching maths to contact us before the scheme reopens. Will you be someone that decides to inspire young people to take up your own passion for mathematics? Will you be a “mathlete” who can inspire the next generation by becoming a Maths Scholar? So it’s of enormous value to champion Maths to encourage others to take up the mathematics baton. Problem solving is becoming more increasingly important. General numerical skills still have value but using statistics and probability is effectively integral to a variety of tasks such as costing, risk assessment, quality control and modelling. We are a digital society and as individuals we must embrace this. If we educate all our students about the power of mathematics and the kinds of jobs that require a sound knowledge of it, things might be clearer for some. Perhaps the days of students asking: “Why are we doing this?” or “When will I actually use this in the real world?” will soon be gone. So why aren’t people taking to maths like ducks to water? Quantitative skills are also key to the contemporary job market Personal finance is an area where mathematical skills are more than helpful. Anyone working in the field of digital marketing for example will know the importance of big data.
We know that we need to interrogate any data critically. It is clear that many debates centre around statistics.
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