Twenty of Taiwan’s students posted perfect scores in the latest American Mathematics Contest 8 (AMC8), accounting for 12.2 percent of the 163 students with perfect scores in the world’s most prominent math contest for youths.
More than 9,500 Taiwanese junior high school and elementary school students were among some 150,000 students from around the world who took part in the 2009 AMC8 in November, the 99 Cultural and Educational Foundation told a press conference yesterday.
HIGHER THAN AVERAGE
Foundation CEO Yan Chi-lin (顏啟麟) said Taiwanese registrants scored an average 15.31 points out of the maximum 25 in the AMC8 2009 contest, much higher than the global average of 10.28 points.
He said, however, that in contrast to the US — where all junior high students are required to take the test — the test is elective in Taiwan, which he said suggests that some degree of prior selection takes place. Thus, he said, the results should not be viewed as a general reflection on the abilities of Taiwanese students.
Taiwan’s performance on the test, held for middle school students in English, Chinese, French and Spanish, was not as strong last year as in 2008, when 124 students out of 9,100 registrants had perfect scores.
ALMOST PERFECT
Yan said that a number of Taiwanese students scored 24 last year, adding that silly mistakes or the jitters may have prevented them from posting perfect scores.
Chou Yi (周逸), a sixth-grader from Taipei Municipal San Min Elementary School who scored a perfect 25 on the test last year, said he had grown fond of math and finds solving math puzzles fun.
CHINESE MATERIALS
Chen Si-an (陳思安), a sixth-grader from Yunlin County’s Gung Cheng Elementary School who also had a perfect score, said he practices mathematics for at least one hour a day, mainly on math test sheets published in China that his father bought for him.
Cheng Ting-ting (程莛婷), a seventh-grader with Koung Rong Junior High School in Taichung County, said her father is a math teacher at a cram school who has helped her study math since she was very young.
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