Dulwich Puxi Students Excel Again at the UKMT Maths Challenge

On Wednesday 5 October, our IB students and some keen problem-solvers from Years 10 and 11 took part in the UK Mathematics Trust Senior Maths Challenge, and their results were fantastic!

At Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi, we foster an environment where students aim to challenge themselves and persevere using critical thinking. The UKMT challenges are a great opportunity for all our learners to test their applied thinking skills against a huge number of other students worldwide. This year, every student from Years 7 to 13 will take part in at least one of these challenges, with three available aimed at different age brackets.

This year’s elective programme also includes two blocks called ‘Olympiad Maths’, where our students are given tough problems to solve independently and in groups, while our team of maths teachers guide them through their thinking and help them identify links to their in-curriculum learning.

The Senior Maths Challenge is aimed at our oldest students up to Year 13, but we encouraged some of our younger students down to Year 10 to participate as well. We are so pleased they did, as they performed exceptionally well!

Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi received 15 certificates in total: 9 Bronze, 2 Silver and 4 Gold.

Certificates were awarded to:

Bronze

Year 10
Zhenzhu E
Richard K
Kevin S
Gianna Z
Steven W (Best in Year)

Year 11
Richard K
Yap X

Year 13
Jay A
Jemima I

Silver

Year 11
Zachary Y
Daniel Y (Best in Year)

Gold

Year 13
Isabel B
Janey X
Yap S
Aidan M (Best in School)

In addition to celebrating these awards on Monday, we also congratulated Jayden C (Y9) on his achievement in the Junior Mathematical Olympiad at the end of last academic year. This is the follow-up competition for students who get close to a perfect score on the Junior Maths Challenge, which our students took in June. Not only did Jayden take part, which is an achievement in itself, but he also attained a merit, which is an outstanding result for a very driven young mathematician.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

If you haven’t flexed your mathematical thinking skills for a while, have a go at this question taken from this year’s Senior Maths Challenge:

Three rugs have a combined area of 90m². When they are laid down to cover completely a floor of area 60m², the area which is covered by exactly two layers of rug is 12m². What is the area of floor covered by exactly three layers of rug?

A: 2m²
B: 6m²
C: 9m²
D: 10m²
E: 12m²

Answer: C 

Try drawing each overlapping rug as intersecting circles (like a Venn diagram) and label each individual section with a letter. By using the information to write three equations with these letters, you can solve them simultaneously to find the solution.