New website ready for 2022-3 maths competitions
By Cathy Chen
The wait is over, the RCHK Maths competitions website has finally been released, and preparations for competitions of all varieties have begun!
The RCHK Maths department recently launched the website, making it more convenient for students to sign up for competitions and for teachers to keep track of interested students.
In previous years, posters for maths competitions would have been stuck in the maths hub, and students would have to email Ms Sanker to sign up. Ms Sanker notes, “[It is] very frustrating to have so many emails coming to me. I get more than fifty emails from students every day.” This situation was not very practical for all parties involved which, combined with the many years of disruption from the pandemic, made the process of promoting and enrolling in competitions even more challenging.
However, this year the department is delighted to have started off with tons of competitions to sign up for, including The World Mathematics Championships, American Mathematics Olympiad, International Mathematics Olympiad and many more
The site shows continuous improvement, innovation and progress. Luciana Guo from class 8.3 commented that, “The new website [makes it more convenient for us] to organise and sign up for competitions.” The website has been designed with posters for each competition and includes required information expressed in a simple but understandable way.
Guo states, “I participated in AMC, WMC and ICAS [last year], and it was pretty complicated because I would have to look around for posters and information around the school.”
Moreover, Calista Cheung from class 8.2 said, “[I participate in] math competitions, and the competitions were very exciting [last year] because they were new to me.”
Due to the many years of Covid, most competitions have been held online. Online competition websites are less reliable as there are often issues that waste time. Cheung hopes that there will be “more face-to-face [competitions] because we encountered some technical difficulties last year. [For one of the competitions last year], we spent three lunchtimes trying to figure out the issue.”
Nonetheless, most students would agree that traditional in-person competitions are more exciting and appropriate. With the Covid restrictions held, most competitions are held either online over zoom, last year’s RCHK math competition being one of them, or on websites like World Mathematics Championships, American Mathematics Competitions, United Kingdom Mathematics Trust and many more. Even though online competitions aren’t so convenient, it can save competitors money from travelling to other countries.
One of the traditional in-person competitions held last year was the American Mathematics Olympiad, where students sat in a classroom with a book of questions and a piece of paper to fill in their answers. In-person competitions would resolve many issues that may encounter online, like connectivity problems.
It is hoped that Covid restrictions will soon relax so that students will be able to attend more face-to-face competitions, as this will make it more convenient to communicate with other team members during team competitions and to ask for help when there is a problem.
As the school year goes on, more and more competitions will become available.