On Wednesday 18 June, Thomas Hassall Anglican College took two Year 7 and two Year 8 students to Richard Johnson Anglican College to compete against 35 other teams in the HICES Maths Challenge.
They participated in 3 different activities – the group challenge, the SWISS challenge, and the relay challenge.
In the group challenge, Noah, Thomas, Lizzie and Isaac had to work together to solve 4 problems at a time. Once 2 problems were solved, they were given the next set of 2 questions. There were a total of 24 questions to be completed in 45 minutes.
The SWISS challenge involved competing against one school at a time. Our students sat in alternate seats and had to determine the algebraic rule linking x and y in a table of values and therefore say what the next number should be. They had 5 seconds to say an answer before it was passed on to the next student from the other school.
For example, what numbers should be in the empty boxes below?
| x | 1 | -15 | 7 | 8 | -2 | 23 |
| y | 20.2 | 17 | 21.4 |
The final challenge was the relay – where our Year 7 students worked together to solve a problem to get the next question which our Year 8 students would then collaborate and solve. There were a total of 25 questions to be completed in 45 minutes.
Here’s a sample Year 8 question – can you solve it?
An isosceles triangle has vertices at (7,8), (a,3) and (7,3). What is the product of all the possible values that a could have?
Mr Andrew Lim
Assistant Coordinator Mathematics
