Have you heard about the Canadian Math Contests? It is certainly for those talented in math and logic to show their ability, and of course, good opportunities for those who love challenges.
For a student to participate in a contest, talk to the school he attends, or talk to us (Jonah’s Math Corner). Be sure enrolled in a middle school located in Canada (a student has to participate through a school or an agent in the country he/she currently studies at).
Please check the grades eligibility too – if it says grade 9, then all students in grade 10 and higher cannot write that contest. A general rule is students in lower grade are allowed to participate in contests for higher grade, but higher grade students CANNOT write contests for lower-grade.
For students wish to participate and challenge, it worths to have in mind the following Contest series: (apart from the Popular Math Contests – which include Math Kangaroo for grades 1 – 12, all other math contests are for middle school students)
1) Popular Math Contests: Math Kangaroo, started in Europe and becoming popular across world, is organized by Math Kangaroo company. Their are 6 age groups and each group bracket two grades, like grades 1-2, grades 3-4, .. .. According to the organizer’s claim, the purpose of the contest is to challenge students in a playful setting; instead of academic, it aims at developing mental powers and flexibility.
2) Junior math contests (have to be under grade 9 to participate): the most popular is the Gauss contest for grades 7 & 8, organized by U. of Waterloo. Gauss is very popular that some school teachers enrolled all of their students to participate. If you live in Alberta, then both U. of Calgary and U. of Alberta have set up challenges for Junior students.
3) Mid-level and High-school level Contests — the main stage for the middle school math challenge. University of Waterloo has organized 3 series respectively for grade 9, 10 and 11. The contests questions appears typically in multiple-choice format.
Series I: PCF contest: Pascal for grade 9, Cayley for grade 10 and Fermat – for grade 11.
Questions in this series appear in multiple-choice format.
Series II: FGH contest: Fryer – for grade 9, Galois – for grade 10 and Hypatia – for grade 11.
No multiple-choice question. All answers have to be worked out by participants. In any of these series, there will be two types of questions, one will ask participants for answers only, and the other type will ask students to write full solutions. Each contests is 75 minutes long.
Series III: CIMC – Canadian Intermediate Math Contests (for grade 9/10) and CSMC – Canadian Senior Math Contests (for grade 11/12). The format is similar to FGH, however, the level of challenge is in general higher, and students are provided with 2 hours time to answer.
4) Selective Contests for those best talents in math: Canadian Math Society have a challenge series for those who want to participate in Math Olympiad. The first step is the COMC (Canadian Open Math Challenge). It is selective, so only COMC is open to students; all following contests in the series, like CMO (Canadian Math Olympiad) and IMO (International Math Olymiad), are by-invitation ONLY.
5) Other Contests: besides those mentioned, we occasionally will register students in Regional Math League of Canada or US – some contests are online only – save students the cost and time to travel.
Jonah’s math corner can serve as a site to supervise students to write the math contests. If you have any question, just talk to us.
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