A total of 124 Taiwanese students scored a perfect result on the American Mathematics Contest 8 (AMC 8), one of the best results on record since the nation was invited to join the international competition a decade ago, the organizer said yesterday at an award presentation ceremony.
This year’s AMC 8, a 25--question, 40-minute multiple choice examination designed mostly for junior high schoolers, was taken by more than 152,900 students from more than 20 countries, including Taiwan, the US, Canada, Singapore and China.
The local section of the AMC 8 was held on Nov. 21, with a record-high 9,593 participants, who averaged 15.7 in the contest, higher than the global average of 9.98, according to a statement from test rganizer, the Nine-Nine Cultural and Educational Foundation.
Photo: CNA
The 124 Taiwanese, ranging from 11 to 15 years old, accounted for nearly 25 percent of the competition’s 499 perfect score students, the statement said.
“This is because the Taiwanese participants are good at solving most types of this year’s questions, such as proportions, quadrature and number theory,” foundation president Ho Yang-ming (何焱銘) said at the award ceremony.
The nation set the record of 124 perfect scores in 2008 among 9,012 local participants, Ho said. The local part of the competition has been running since 1999.
Hsu Min-heng (徐敏恆), an 11-year-old elementary school student, who entered the contest for the first time this year, was the youngest Taiwanese to record a perfect score.
Hsu first showed an interest in math in kindergarten and then spent most of his time studying math by himself instead of going to cram school, his father, Hsu Wen-jong (徐文中), said on the sidelines of the ceremony.
“When he was seven, my wife and I found one day that he had been trying to read his older sister’s mathematics junior high school textbook. He really enjoys thinking about mathematical questions,” said Hsu’s father, who is dean of academic affairs in a senior high school in Taichung.
Ho also said that the foundation subsidizes the application fees for more than 300 students from low-income families to encourage their participation in the competition.
“We will continue our subsidies for those children who have few opportunities to take part in international events and we hope the contest will become another credible channel for talent-selection in addition to the basic competence test held by the government,” he said.
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