Great Scot December 2019 Great Scot 158_December_ONLINE | Page 37

EXCELLENCE IN
MATHEMATICS
Scotch’s Mathematics department aims to
provide students with opportunities to engage
with Mathematics to the highest level of which
they are capable. This is no small task, given
the considerable talent of some of our boys.
A sampling of success stories from 2019 is
provided in what follows.
The Australian Mathematics Competition
is one of the largest competitions of its kind
in the world. It has had over 15 million entries
since its inception in 1978, and is one of
the primary mechanisms for identifying and
developing mathematical talent in Australian
youth.
Each year the top-performing students
in the competition are invited to Government
House (in one of the states or territories, on
a rotating basis) to receive medals from the
sitting governor. This year 30 students from
across Australia were awarded medals for
their outstanding performance, three of whom
were Scotch students: Liam Chen (Year 7),
Jordan Chi (Year 8), and Matthew Lee (Year
12). No other school in the country surpassed
this medal haul.
The School Maths Olympics is a
mathematics outreach activity of the
University of Melbourne, held annually on their
Open Day in August. Schools are invited to
submit teams of five students who compete
in a frenetic problem-solving relay. Students
work in pairs to solve problems, while the
fifth member acts as a runner who ferries the
questions and answers between contestants
and organisers. The runner is rotated
periodically.
The Scotch team consisted of William
Sutherland, Tianqi Feng, Kevin Wu (all of Year
12), Andres Buritica Monroy (Year 10) and Zian
Shang (Year 8). After getting every question
right in this event, they were subsequently
invited back to compete in its undergraduate
analogue, the University Maths Olympics.
This operates on the same principles, except
that the teams comprise university students.
If the Scotch boys were intimidated by their
competition, then it did not show: they
defeated almost all of the university teams to be
placed a very impressive second overall.
KEVIN WU, TIANQI FENG,
WILLIAM SUTHERLAND,
ZIAN SHANG, MATTHEW
LEE. ABSENT: ANDRES
BURITICA MONROY
Research in Pure Mathematics is a domain
generally restricted to those few who pursue
the subject at great length. Many sub-fields
require years of postgraduate study before
their frontiers can be understood, let alone
expanded. A counter-example is provided
by the recent work of one of Scotch’s finest
young scholars, Andres Buritica Monroy
of Year 10.
Andres has written an article in which
he proves an original and significant result
establishing an algorithm for determining the
Cartesian equation of an essentially arbitrary
plane figure. The mathematical content of
the article is entirely Andres’ own work. With
some mild encouragement he submitted
it to The Mathematical Gazette, a leading
academic journal, published by Cambridge
University Press. The article has subsequently
been peer-reviewed and accepted for
publication, and is due to appear in the
journal’s July 2020 edition.
DR GARETH AINSWORTH –
HEAD OF MATHEMATICS
www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot
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