Iori Yamamoto
On March 7th, 25 Saint Maur students took part in Math Field Day, a 12-school large competition, where they were treated to a day of mathematical challenges. I talked to three of the students who participated in the event about their experience.
Chengkai, a Grade 11 student, gave the following reason for going to Math Field Day: “Well, I was looking for intellectual stimulation,” he said. He followed by commenting on working on the various problems, saying that “it was fun; I had a great time.” Despite the fun he had at the event, it seems he had a slight problem: “at the end of the day, I felt this great sense of insecurity because [one of] my teammates were just too smart,” he says. “He outsmarted me.” I asked if he felt that the event was still worthwhile. “Yeah, absolutely. It sort of made me self aware.”
A Grade 10 student who attended the event, Julius, explained the group activity to me. “In the group activity, we had to build plastic ropes out of trash bags to climb a tree to get fruits from the tree. And it was very challenging, definitely, because you had to figure out how to make this rope long and strong enough,” he said. However, he encountered some trouble with his team. “I told them you have to use a double prusik knot because it’s a climbing knot where you go (he then gestured the knotting to me) because you always want the pressure from the knot to be parallel to the axis of force that’s going to be applied. They didn’t listen to me, so the rope tore very quickly,” he explained. Other than these communication errors, he said that “Math Field Day was great.”
Another Grade 11 student, Xingyang, also said he found the day very enjoyable. I asked him what topic in math he finds the most interesting, to which he responded: “Well, to be honest, everything. But as many would know, I like geometry because personally, I find geometry more interesting as [the solution] is not that obvious for each question. When you do enough problems, you can see what the question is trying to tell you, when they tell you the information.”
Math Field Day was clearly a rewarding experience for all who took part, allowing students to work and communicate with others, as well as explore many branches of math. Finally, Chengkai had a tip for the reader who is tackling a particularly tough problem. He says that you should “use intuition” more when working on a math problem. According to him, you may have a natural instinct for math. Whether you take this advice or not, all the students I talked to said that solving problems at Math Field Day was fun, and they would definitely look into more opportunities to continue in the future.
Iori Yamamoto