OLMCBI 209

The Australian Mathematics Competition takes place today. First run in 1978, it is the longest running, largest and most well-known competition for maths students in Australia. The competition has unique problems designed by leading educators and academics to challenge and extend students’ problem solving skills.

OLMC has entered 125 students to compete in the competition. Students will have 75 minutes to complete all questions. An example of the types of questions that students may be faced with is as follows:

'An infinite increasing list of numbers has the property that the median of the first n terms equals the nth odd positive integer. How many numbers in the list are less than 2018?'

The solution is listed at the bottom of this article.

Today is also the birthday of the mathematician, John Venn. Venn was an English mathematician, logician and philosopher noted for introducing Venn diagrams in the field of mathematics, which are used in logic, set theory, probability, statistics and computer science. OLMC students are very familiar with the use of Venn diagrams in Probability.

Mark Vorster
Mathematics Learning Leader