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Original poster

Intermediate Maths Challenge

61 replies

TheSecondOfHerName · 04/02/2016 21:25

Anyone's DC take part in the open round this morning?

DS2 felt that it went well.

Last year he did quite well in the Junior one (gold certificate in the open round and a merit in the Olympiad) but he was in the oldest year group taking part. This year he is in the youngest year group for the Intermediate one, competing with children two years above.

OP posts:
OhYouBadBadKitten · 05/02/2016 18:22

The kangaroo is an international competition, so its pretty cool :)

AtiaoftheJulii · 05/02/2016 17:38

Consolation sounds really patronising, sorry. Am blanking on a better way to put it. It requires a different style of answers than the Olympiad questions.

AtiaoftheJulii · 05/02/2016 17:36

Each year group Second. Generally the kangaroo is on the same day as the olympiads, although this year it seems to be the week after. The kangaroo is a sort of consolation round, rather than a step to go through.

Original poster
TheSecondOfHerName · 05/02/2016 17:35

I've now read the link and seen that it contains the answer to my question. I doubt that DS2 will qualify for the Olympiad this year, but he might qualify for the kangaroo.

OP posts:
AtiaoftheJulii · 05/02/2016 17:34

Yeah, by the end of the month I think, because the intermediate olympiads are 10 March (I just looked!).

Ds says he reckons 113/135 - I tutted WinkGrin

Original poster
TheSecondOfHerName · 05/02/2016 17:33

OhYouBadBadKitten Thank you for explaining. When you say the top 500 scoring children from each year group, do you mean the top 500 scores from the open round (that happened yesterday) or the top 500 scores from the kangaroo? Thanks.

OP posts:
relaxitllbeok · 05/02/2016 17:11

Web page says "We aim to return the results to schools within six weeks, but where we have a valid email address we will email the results within three weeks."
www.ukmt.org.uk/individual-competitions/intermediate-challenge/

Ethelswith · 05/02/2016 17:09

I asked DS about this and he just grunted.

He was one mark off the next level last year.

I can't remember, how long does it take to get scores back?

Shineyshoes10 · 05/02/2016 16:58

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

OhYouBadBadKitten · 05/02/2016 16:52

I don't think many practise challenges - but they do help. For the olympiads, if they look like they may be able to get into them at some point. one good way to get more confident is to ask the school to put them on a mentoring scheme. Or if you are reasonably confident you could do a previous years mentoring scheme which come with answers: intermediate mentoring the disadvantage is the lack of being able to discuss it with someone.

relaxitllbeok · 05/02/2016 16:24

You practise them - UKMT have lots of past papers available. Nrich and AoPS have good resources too: anything that makes you turn your brain on rather than just turn a handle is good!

partialderivative · 05/02/2016 15:46

How do you prepare for such questions?

(though I do love them)

OhYouBadBadKitten · 05/02/2016 15:43

There isn't a medal for this round :) just the levels of certificates.

It is a little confusing.

Primary maths challenge is for primary school kids. Don't think that is run by UKMT.

Junior is for years 8 and below and has a Junior kangaroo and olympiad. Run by UKMT.

Intermediate is for year 11 and below. From there year 9s and below can get into the pink kangaroo and Year 10 and 11 into the Grey Kangaroo. Top 500 from each year group qualify for one of the three Olympiads. Those olympiads are strictly by year group. Cayley for Yr9 and below, Hamilton for Year 10, Maclaurin for Year 11.

Senior challenge is for Year 13 and below. Top scorers go into BMO1 and the top scorers of that go into BMO2.

The 3 challenges for secondary kids are run by ukmt.

Run out of time to talk about the team challenges!!!

AtiaoftheJulii · 05/02/2016 15:37

The Primary one is run by different people, but UKMT www.ukmt.org.uk/ run the others, yes.

Michaelahpurple · 05/02/2016 15:32

I find all these maths things a bit confusing - primary, junior, intermediate, various colours of kangaroo, first rounds, bonus rounds etc, all happening at different times of year and often done out of the indicated age ranges. And is the team maths competition in the summer by the same organisation?

Michaelahpurple · 05/02/2016 15:30

My DS had a go at it last night - optional as he is year 8 but most of his class signed up. He got the maths star of the class to mark it for him and thinks he got one of the last section wrong and he missed three of that lot, so if the thresholds were like last year he might be in the running for a medal, which would be exciting. He managed to dodge doing it last year so I don't have a reference of difficulty.

AtiaoftheJulii · 05/02/2016 13:31

Does/will he do any preparation for the Hamilton Autumnsky?

They were saying on TSR that this year's BMO1 was easier than last year, but then the thresholds for BMO2 were lower!

When I say he's hoping for the same, I haven't actually spoken about it to him properly Grin He got in late last night and got up late this morning, and when I asked him about it before he went out, he just said "oh, it was fine". I'm sure he will have a look at the answers tonight!

OhYouBadBadKitten · 05/02/2016 12:44

true relaxit :)

Autumnsky · 05/02/2016 11:50

DS1 is y10, last year he got gold in first round, and got distinguish with book and medal in Olympiad round. Yesterday, he missed 2 questions, 1 is run out of time, 1 he can't work it out. For the ones he did, he got it all correct.

MidLifeCrisis007 · 05/02/2016 11:35

Crikey - that looks tough.... glad they didn't have that sort of thing in my day!!

Still awaiting feedback from DS (yr 9) on how it went for him.

relaxitllbeok · 05/02/2016 11:29

(that was to OhYouBad - no idea about new style GCSE!)

relaxitllbeok · 05/02/2016 11:28

You may be right, guess we'll see when the boundaries come out how the participants found them!

drivinmecrazy · 05/02/2016 11:27

Isn't the new style GCSE more about applying the maths they learn? That seems to be the major difference I see in DD's maths books.

OhYouBadBadKitten · 05/02/2016 11:22

Actually, I think those questions are pretty tough this year. - especially some of the geometry questions. Although all of the questions use KS3 maths, its about applying it in a deep way.

drivinmecrazy · 05/02/2016 11:10

OOPS! This has reminded me that I forgot to ask DD how this went yesterday!

I think this website has the 2016 paper www.ukmt.org.uk/individual-competitions/intermediate-challenge/

I don't think it looks too bad at all ( caveat I would really struggle!!) . But based on the maths DD has been doing in yr10 it looks pretty reasonable.