On April 2nd, students participated in the University of Waterloo Euclid Math Competition. Students had to use their knowledge from throughout high school to solve a series of problems under a time limit. The contest challenged participants on many topics and allowed them to challenge their skills.
The Euclid contest is run worldwide by the University of Waterloo for senior high school students. The questions are a mix of short-answer and full-solution questions that are arranged in increasing difficulty, with the most complex questions at the end. The topics are varied, including Logarithms, Analytic Geometry, Functions, and Sequences and Series. The contest is not required for students applying to the University of Waterloo. However, it is recommended for students interested in Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics or Faculty of Science to help with entrance scholarships.
Students who participated in the competition had a hard time. Raam Joshi, a Grade 12 student, rated the difficulty as 10/10. “A lot of the people we were with never made it to the end. The difficulty scaled and the most difficult problem was a type of probability question,” he said. “Ms Hlavnicka also did the test with us, and we compared answers. Even she said it was very time-consuming.”
Joshi also competed in previous math contests offered by Waterloo, such as the Pascal, Cayley and Fermat Contests for grades 9 to 11. He compared them and said that Euclid was the most difficult. “The Grade 9 contest only requires Grade 9 and below thinking and problem-solving skills. It goes higher and higher until the contest requires Grade 12 level problem solving, plus everything below.”
Despite the complexity of the questions, Joshi recommended that other students compete to apply their knowledge beyond assessments in school. “If you’re able to use all of the different values you learned throughout the years, it’ll greatly benefit you and help you gain knowledge.”
THE NORTH STAR 