Learning Curve: the wonder of maths
A morning rain was always followed by a clear afternoon. An afternoon rain was always preceded by a clear morning. A total of nine mornings and 12 afternoons were clear. How many days had no rain at all?
Editor's note: this story has been updated to remove an image.
Here's a quick brain-stretcher: over a certain period, rain fell on 11 days. A morning rain was always followed by a clear afternoon. An afternoon rain was always preceded by a clear morning. A total of nine mornings and 12 afternoons were clear. How many days had no rain at all? Would the answer be two, three, four or five days?
Such puzzles don't faze students who took part in the South East Asian Mathematics Competition (Semac) in Bangkok last weekend. The Hong Kong contestants included a contingent of six students from the French International School - Edwina Gautier, Michelle Kempis, Helena Kwon, Sally Nakai, Jean Baptiste Rioual and Linda Woodrow - led by maths teacher Swati Ray.
The students had committed time out of class to prepare for this event and looked forward to tackling similar problems with teams from other international schools in the region.
In my experience as form tutor, students seldom use the words "excitement" and "mathematics" in the same sentence. So, the competition is a valuable platform for livening up maths.
"First of all, students see that maths can be fun, and devoting a weekend to solving maths problems is not daunting," Ray says. "Second, the different events help them understand the practical application of mathematics. And last but not the least, students learn from their peers. They are empowered and motivated when they see students their age attack problems they are not able to."