UKMT intermediate maths challenge?

[southernsoftie]

Anyone else's child done this? And does anyone know how many children sit it each year? I have had a quick look on the website and it says roughly how many get through to each stage but not how many are entered to start with. DS is hoping to do maths and further maths at A level and I wondering if there is likely to be any correlation between the intermediate challenge and likely success at A level.

He got into the Hamilton Olympiad at intermediate level. He is Y10. It seems to me to be a fantastic achievement (he is the first child from his school ever to get to that level although he is at a non-selective school so that may not be as good as it sounds) but I think he was secretly hoping to be invited to the summer school. Does anyone have any experience of the summer school and whether it would be worth asking if he might be able to attend?

Well done pinkcheese - you'll have to make yourself a certificate

My daughter went to the summer school - she's at a grammar. You get a list of all the kids in your week, with their schools. 3/4 of the 40 were public schools whose names you'd recognise (if you are a proper mumsnetter, lol!) - I was quite surprised, and then felt rather naive. They only take one kid from each school (otherwise it'd be ten Etonians etc ...) She'd done well, though not brilliantly (I think she got distinction, but not into the prize zone) in the Hamilton.

Trying to think when she got the invitation - must have been around half term. I think they put on an extra couple of weeks last year - might be worth asking what is available, but as far as I know it's all invitation-only.

The Royal Institution do a summer school which last year had several one and two day maths courses. There must be other similar things going in other places.

And of course, well done to him! :-)

I know a couple of dc who have attended the summer school southernsoftie. As far as I remember they look not just at the results from the current year but also those from earlier years too. Also, they did run two summer schools at one point (don't know if they still do) and then, one was selected from very high results in the JMC and the other from Olympiad results.

Wow I found out my DD1 this when she came home from school and casually mentioned it. Had no idea it was such a big deal, national competition etc.. All the girls in her year do it. There are some maths geniuses in her class, so she is in the middle, so don't expect her to do particularly well.

Can you prep for these (she clearly didn't!)? Never mind, I think her skills lie elsewhere. At least she is relaxed about it, not remotely thinking about the results. I'll know more next year I hope!

sorry one selected from high results in the intermediate challenge (not JMC) and the other from olympiad results. Obviously earlier results are only considered when they are available.

Yeah, I've wondered how much they track people, given that it's all working towards finding the team for the international Olympiad, but dd1 got zero in her Cayley paper, so clearly it's not too important!

dd got 46 in the Cayley - so she got a prize but not into the summer schools which I think are primarily for year 10 and 11. Shes in a non-selective comp so school are very pleased.

(cor I sound like a self satisfied prig in that last post - we were actually rather astounded and very very pleased for her)

That's fantastic - that makes her top 50, doesn't it? Marvellous :) Hope she is suitably chuffed with herself and being fussed over by maths teachers :) Do you know the breakdown (just out of nosiness, lol)?

My ds got 36, so pleased too :) And he's y8 so he gets another crack at it next year which is quite nice!

It does - which is bloody astonishing! School are making a proper fuss, which is lovely as shes the sort that sits quietly refusing to accept thats shes done well. She kinda cant ignore this.

She got 10, 10, 10, 10, 6, 0 She got number 5 right but couldn't come up with a rigorous proof. For number 6 she didnt put anything as she said that her rough workings just ended up rephrasing the question.

Your ds is doing superbly too - you should both be very pleased indeed!

Those are brilliant scores OYBBK & Atia, kudos to your dc.

My DD has been doing all these since Yr 3, when she did the Junior at the local Grammar. She then started the intermediate in Yr 5 and was upset because the senior is the only one that won't let a non senior school pupil sit it. The head of maths promised as soon as she started at the Grammar properly she could sit the senior one. So in Yr 7 and 8 she has sat the senior and got silver both years, desperately wants to get into the senior Olympiad next year. This years intermediate she got a merit on the Olympiad. Told her that's good and she's got 3 years to get higher. Was trying to find out how many got Merit and how many got Distinction.
The ones that take points is to try and discourage just guessing at the answer as that doesn't give a proper indication of knowledge.
In the Olympiads the questions are scored up to 10 points each, depending on correct answer and description of working outs.
DD is expected to get A* in GCSE and is currently studying to sit the OCR advanced maths at the end of next year(9).
The type of questions in the UKMT are different to GCSE, they are more applied maths, applying your book knowledge in different ways.
It helps get them used to exam conditions as well.

Has anyone's kids done the team challenges. DD did the Junior team challenge this year and won their regional so are off to London for the final. Got to have her at the station for 6:15 am to catch train.

Yup, my DS is off to national final of TMC too. Did it last year too, hoping to come further away from last this time! Btw it's not true that you have to be at secondary to do the senior maths challenge, my DS is a counterexample; you might want to push back on that. Hope she has fun!

Oh, I misread, she's doing SMC now, fine. Still, in case anyone else is told differently, definitely UKMT don't mind young students sitting any of their challenges.

My son's going too - it looks like it should be a good day out - did your son enjoy it last year relax ?

tibicar from what I understand, Merit is the middle 50%. So if 1200 did the Cayley, then somewhere in the 300-900. The boundaries are on the IMOK page.

Has she done the JMC/JMO too this year?

Atiaofthejulli. Found it on Wikipedia after asking. Bottom 50% is Participation, next 25% is Merit and top 25% is distinction.
Relax. I think he said that because if she'd managed to do well she wouldn't be able to attend the trials for Inernationals until age 11.

She is looking forward to the team finals. The subject for the poster comp looks complicated.

Atia: yes, all the team seem to have had a whale of a time.

tibicar: that still doesn't actually make sense; there are two more rounds of increasingly harder tests (Senior Kangaroo as lower follow-on from SMC, BMO1 for the top 1000, then BMO2 for the top 100 scorers in BMO2), without age limits and taken in students' own schools, before they'd have to go anywhere, and there's a huge gap between doing enough on the SMC for it to be fun taking it and being a high scorer on BMO2 ! Probably your DD's teacher was confused about the process; either that or just making an excuse, I'm afraid. But obviously your DD is in the system now; good luck to her in this autumn's SMC. DS did the SK last year and is also hoping to get to BMO1 next.

Well that wasn't a great start to Team challenge finals day. They were booked on the 06:28 train which would have got them to London with plenty of time to get on the tube and walk to the hall before 10am start of registration. It was cancelled due to a fault on the train, so now they are barely going to make it for 11am and be stressed out. Oh well.

Hope they made it ok and had all calmed down by the time they got there :) dh sent me this link earlier www.moretonhallschool.com/National-Final-of-the-Junior-Team-National-Maths-Challenge---Live-Blog , thought I'd share it.

Referring back a month - OhyoubadKitten - let your daughter know that it's always worth putting in something (all your rough work if the test asks for it, for instance) - rephrasing the question is the correct starting point. At international olympiad level you can expect to get 1 mark (out of 7) if all you have done is indicated an understanding of the question.

That is worth knowing, I will do pythonesque. It does state no rough working but I think she could have written up her re-phrasing of the question.
She's actually becoming a bit serious about these competitions now - wants to do well. School are being supportive in as much as saying dd can do whatever she likes to prepare for them during lessons and they are seeking an external mentor but I think dd is a bit at sea on how to do it prepare other than working through the ukmt books. In fact I think we are all stumbling around in the dark a bit with none of us having any experience. I'd really welcome advice.

I think the Problem Solver's Handbook is a good start, because it talks about types of questions and how to attack them.

The UKMT say that for intermediate pupils, mentoring is through the school. They have several months' worth of old mentoring questions www.ukmt.org.uk/mentoring/intermediate/ . If there's not a teacher at school with enough time to do something with her, is there a keen mathsy 6th former who might? Would look good on their UCAS form too

Ds has been seeing a y13 once a week, and they do all sorts of weird and wonderful maths, and his maths teacher has promised me he'll have one of the current y12s lined up soon for him!

Oh, also meant to say that nrich is a good resource for challenging problems, and you can send in solutions to unanswered ones which may get published (they're quite slow, ime!). There's also a forum nrich.maths.org/discus/messages/board-topics.html which could be useful to her - there used to be lots of UKMT-type people on it.

Plus there are threads on The Student Room about the UKMT challenges/olympiads, so they might be interesting to her.