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MONTHLY NEWS November 1996 12-Year-Old Wins Gold Medal in Math Olympics |
A 12-year-old boy living in Osaka took top honors at the fifth Math Olympics, held in Tokyo on August 25. The annual math contest this year attracted close to 4,000 elementary school children from Japan and other countries, including China and South Korea.
Shin'ichiro Iga, a sixth grader at Namba Motomachi Elementary School in the city of Osaka scored 87 points out of a maximum of 120 points, highest among the 147 finalists who passed a preliminary contest in July. Participants were required to solve nine problems in 90 minutes in the preliminary test, and six in 120 minutes in the finals. |
Shin'ichiro said that he decided to enter the contest at the suggestion of his juku (private school attended after regular classes) teacher. "I never thought I would even make it to the finals," he said ecstatically. "And after the answers were collected at the finals I told myself I'd be happy to make the top 15, since I couldn't answer two of the six questions."
The Math Olympics was initiated in 1992 at the proposal of Heisuke Hironaka, an internationally acclaimed mathematician who is professor emeritus at Harvard University. |
For all of you math whizzes out there, here's one of the questions that was given at the finals. See if you can solve it!
Question: There is a village with a population of 1,000, each of whom lives in a separate house. Each resident sends just one New Year greeting card to his or her closest neighbor. The distances between houses are varied. No one receives any cards from people living outside the village. What is the maximum number of cards one villager can receive? Explain your answer. Click here for the answer
Photos: (top) The 15 finalists and sponsors pose for a commemorative photo. (Arithmetic Olympics)
(middle) Shin'ichiro at his desk. (Asahi Shimbun) (above) Being conferred the Math Olympics gold medal. (Arithmetic Olympics)
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