Maths....

[oldbirdy]

My ds (9) is very good at maths. Never managed to get school to do anything extra but git him an 11+ tutor recently who is very excited about him, says he could do higher maths GCSE now with just a little teaching of content. She is talking about maths Olympiad etc when he's older and says he's the most capable mathematician she has ever had. She can't keep him on after Feb for personal reasons, and I don't want to let him drift again like I did for all these years at school. She will 'pick him up' again end of the year but does anyone have any suggestions for good resources he can work on in the meantime? He's better than me already, my maths is very average. Are there junior equivalents of the Olympiad for example or other organisations for talented mathematicians? He comes alive when he's working on a really hard puzzle, bless him.

The answer is none :)
However, we need to consider that some powerhouse in Asia in IMO are still relatively very poor compares to Western countries and America. The financial reward of doing mathematical research is really low compares to most jobs and it can be a lonely route without guaranteed success.
In the squad in my year, out of all the people that I still know, more than half are working in investment banking. Some other changed to computer science later on and now work for Google or started their own tech company. Two of us teach. Both are in the UK but my mate teaches Computer Science at university. I am the only one who still do Maths day in day out but at a lower level. Being a secondary Maths teacher in the UK, I am still living more comfortable than any Maths researchers back home :) One of many reasons that IMO medallists might not go on to work in Maths research at all, let alone being the best in the world at it.

So the kids that you coach have all done GCSE and A-level early? How does the school work around that with regards to timetabled maths provision?

I disagree that you need a goal to move forward in maths. My dd will often have a problem on the go that she has created and ponders on it at every opportunity. She will suddenly present us with an incomprehensible (to me) discovery - because maths is what makes her tick. She isn't driven by the next stage of the olympiad comps - they provide a means of stimulation for her.

"The thing with Maths I believe you need to have something to aim for. It could be an exam, a certain grade, a certain level of achievement like getting to BMO round or get called up to the UK squad etc. Without it, just doing Maths for the sake of it or as a hobby wouldn't get you far because you will lose interest sooner or later."

That's interesting. I just assumed that people who were really keen on maths would do it for pleasure, like other people might read books and play the piano. Is that not so?

I read an interview with Elton John the other day. He doesn't have a piano in his house (well, one of his houses) - it's work, not a hobby. So some people (several in my family!) will do maths for fun, others won't I guess. But no, I certainly don't agree that you must have a goal or there's no point.

My ds did BMO2 last year. He hasn't done GCSE yet, let alone A level maths.

I lost all my free and lunch today to mock interviews and only just finished catching up with everything else that I could have done at work.

noblegiraffe I receive next no help from SLT and even from colleagues. I got really frustrated when one teacher taught one of my mentees in year 11 and made her do circle theorems, sine & cosine rule and similar topics although her understanding of Euclidean Geometry is better than the rest of the department combined. SLT are happy to show them off when it is open day but when I asked for extra help with buying books or taking them out of Maths lessons to work with me, it often falls on deaf ears. I don't focus on GCSE or A Level topics but my programme is problem based. By solving problems, they will "accidentally" discover that they need new skills and techniques. We then work through more problems and they learn the skills and concepts by doing that. If you have come across the mentoring sheets from the UKMT then I do similar things. I set them a problem set a week and they work through them at home or when they get bored in lesson, which is quite often when they were doing GCSE and A Level Maths. They don't do my work if they are in Further Maths lessons though. They then mentor the smaller ones in year 10. If I have some help, I probably can expand it down to year 7 but I don't so I can't.

OhYouBadBadKitten and BertrandRussell whatever I say is my personal experience and anecdotes so please don't take it too seriously. When I moved to my current school, a student was about to go off to university. He passed his GCSE in year 6, studied A Level Maths in year 7 and F Maths in 8 & 9. He then spent the next three years drifting in and out of Maths doing STEPs, Olympiad problems or following his own "research". He wasn't good at any other subjects, quite immature and with a few SN, he would not have coped going to university early. He is what I got in mind when I said kids like that need something to aim for or they would lose interest pretty quickly. Maybe it is just me, but I noticed that the majority of kids who did Olympiad Maths in my time were boys. We thrived on competitions, ranking and medal. Without that, we would have gotten bored really quickly.

AtiaoftheJulii your son must be really good to qualified for BMO2 at that age. I started Olympiad Maths again after a long break and I can only do 2, maximum of 3 problems at BMO2 now. You say he hasn't done GCSE Maths yet but if we give him like a week to revise and study, would you say he probably will get a grade 9 easily? If the answer is yes, which I guess it is, then it is just a matter of personal choice to do the exam or not I think.

However, we need to consider that some powerhouse in Asia in IMO are still relatively very poor compares to Western countries and America.

But in Western countries the salaries for being an academic and working in finance differ by at least a factor of 10. Many top mathematicians will indeed go into finance, regardless of which country they come from. A fraction of Asian ex-IMOs stay in academia (I know a number of them) but they are not really world leading researchers. By contrast, a fraction of Western ex-IMOs also stay in academia and are world leading researchers (Gowers, Green etc).

So salaries on their own really do not explain why so few Asians succeed in becoming world leading scientists.

I met the one Asian Field Medallist. He is a friend of a friend. When we visitted Vietnam a couple of years back and had morning coffee together. All of us were ex IMO contestants or at least in the last ten of our country. We had a long conversation about our education, each country's education system. The thing that we all had in common is each country place an emphasis on IMO and other competitions of similar type. The kids who are good at Maths are like minor celebrities even outside the Maths community. We were spotted and selected very early on. In my friend's case, he went to selected school for Maths only at around 9 years old. Imagine the top 100 that got selected from a country of around 80 millions. They competed and got ranked every months. Every year they have to take the entrance exam again so the weaker ones got kicked out and other kids could get in. They competed at national level every year as they went straight to national round by default. When they reached high school, they started training for IMO.

My country has a similar system. In all our cases, we didn't have to take the entrance exam to university and we had the choice of any university we wanted. We had access to all the scholarships given to our countries from the UK, US, Australia to name a few. We did not have to pay attention to any other subjects if we did not want to and still received top marks by default. However, because of that, we only studied Maths and nothing else. We went to camp for months and months. As you can imagine it was not a very well rounded education at all. A lot of kids reached their maximum level there and then. Some got completely turned off by Maths as in my case and left the coutry to study oversea. It is only a high school contest after all. It only tests maily four basic areas of Maths. As much as we loved the problems, it is not a natural progression to research Maths. All (or most) problems in IMO have an elegant solution so it does not reflect what people do in Maths research.

I prefer the way it is done in the UK. It is definitely less intensive. The camps are only 1 or 2 weeks. The competitors still go and study all subjects and receive a more rounded education, which I think in the long term would mean they have other interest and their mental health would be at a much better state. I am sure they still do lots of Maths but because they want to, not because they have to.

GHGN it's so interesting to hear about your experiences, and also what you're doing in your school

I wasn't mentioning my son to brag (OYBBK's dd got better scores in both rounds than him last year!) but just in reply really to noble's question to you about whether all your proteges had done GCSE and A level. And yes, he's hoping for a 9 when he does it next year!

Good luck to all those doing BMO1 today

How is your ds feeling Atia? dd is a mix of really looking forward to it and rather nervous with the expectations on her. Good luck to him - he is a year younger than dd - he has done amazingly!!

GHGN - that's fascinating!! I've sometimes wondered whether UKMT should run a much more intensive program - it would take government support though. But I've come to the conclusion that it is better to sacrifice some maths results, for getting a better rounded individual. That has been something I've been really really keen on for dd. It wasn't until year 10 when I finally shrugged my shoulders and said that if she wanted to ditch other stuff for maths then she could. She still kept up her sport and her music, but at a lower level.
The most important thing I can say about her, is that she is happy. What more could a parent want?

And it is so true that IMO is so different from research!! It must be rather difficult to adjust to the idea that there may well not be a solution.

He's been feeling the weight of expectation quite heavily this year, which is partly what's making him want to change for sixth form. He's had a rough time these last few months, and has gcse mocks starting on Monday, so not best timing. (In fact he went straight to a language listening mock, which he said was disastrous, couldn't concentrate at all on that!) That said, he was reasonably confident. But came home saying he'd found it much harder than last year, hadn't given anything in for the last three questions, and had realised he'd cocked up one of the ones he had done - so thinks he can only get about 21 at most, so not expecting to qualify for bmo2. Ah well. He's ok.

How did your dd find it? How many did it at her school? (I think ds said there were 16 of them doing it at his.)
GHGN, what did your students think of it?

We have six doing it this year. Most could do 3 questions: 1, 2 and one more question 3 or 4. One y13 boy completed 4 and was in the middle of q6 when the exam finished. He left q5 without even attempting it. The best one did 5 and wrote something for the sixth question. I am not surprised by the girl at all as she has been doing some IMO and Chinese Olympiad questions before

I was trying to stay awake and doing the paper last night but wasn't very successful. I think q1 & 2 are straight forward. I haven't attempted the Geometry question yet. As a rule of thumb, if there is only one Geometry question, it tends to be really hard. 6 looks tough. I did a bit of Q3 using modular arithmetic and restricted m & n quite a lot but that when I felt asleep. The girl's solution is less than half a page so she must have picked up something that I didn't.

The combinatorics question this year is straight forward compares to last year. It took me two incorrect attempts to get the right answer last year.

I didn't like last year paper as it was quite vague. The "supposedly easy" Question 1 last year was confusing for me. I found this year paper more straight forward but it is likely because of what I am good at.

There's a video of Geoff Smith going through the solutions to this year's paper here: bmos.ukmt.org.uk/solutions/bmo1-2017/

My school had two doing the BMO this year and a few others doing Kangaroo. Don't know how they got on though.

We were watching you tube maths tutorial video while eating lunch today.
Delight in his face when he learns new things is priceless. It just makes me sad that it doesn't happen at school, with somebody more clued up with maths than me.

Q6 was tough!
Dd had a good go at the paper, so we'll see in a week or so. Fingers crossed for happy kids.

Good luck to your DD. Hope she gets to BMO2.

Did she by any chance take the UK MOG earlier this year?

ghgn, she did. I'm happy to talk by pm as it's getting awfully specialised!

How many getting through to the next round of the Senior UKMT individual challenge would you hope for in a normal sized school (1500) ?

no idea yoyo, what do you mean by next round? kangaroo, bmo? does it have a sixth form, do they do any practise or similar enrichment? I would say very few.

Atia, sorry, a bit more time now. I'm sorry that your ds is having a bit of a rough time this year. That is one massive problem with these comps, if they do well one year then schools and or parents (not you!) can get over excited and inadvertently put far too much pressure on them. Often these kids put enough pressure on themselves. It's really important that they don't judge themselves on the basis of 6 questions - that isn't who they are! They are bright mathematicians, who don't suddenly become less bright because they couldn't unlock a couple of questions on a particular day.

dd and I have got to the point where we don't report results anywhere on the internet, not even to family, it's not fair to her. If she wants to tell carefully selected friends that's her choice, she knows who will support her good or bad. I think it would be number one advice to parents of bright kids - don't get overexcited and beware how much pressure you can inadvertently put them under.

Kangaroo and BMO . Just wondering about how to spot a school that provides enrichment in this area. Just the opportunity to do the papers is great. The number that get through to the next round may also be a pointer that support (e.g like GHGN) may well be present.

Non maths parent here thrown into a maths world trying to do the right thing for schooling!

just ask the hod of schools you are considering.

Have done! Schools seem to get a couple through each year, so I assume that is okay from posts here (Noble Giraffe). DS loves the UKMT.

That's good :) at dds school she did gcses at she was their first bmo student. Which I'd say is typical of most comprehensive schools.

I have been teaching in a few grammars,none of which put any emphasis on this kind of thing. They all say they put students in to do the Maths challenges at all level. However, it is one hour or one hour and a half exam a year. Pupils probably are given a couple of past papers to do the lesson before. For the rest of the year, they get on with the normal curriculum with some extension/enrichment activities thrown in. In all the schools that I trained/worked in, there was normally 1, at most two that get through to the next round and then got nowhere after that because they couldn't do well enough in BMO1.

To do well in this kind of thing, in my opinion, either the student has to be self motivated and looks for resources on the internet or they have to be coached by someone who has done it before. This is very unlikely. I don't know about top private schools but in grammar, and I taught in a couple of grammar schools that are top ten in the league table, there are not a single teacher can do a simple BMO1 question, let alone coach someone to do it. You can find people that do STEP easily but not Olympiad Maths. I am not sure why though.