Hong Kong's reputation for producing talented maths students received an extra boost last week when a local student and two of the city's schools topped a worldwide maths competition that involved students from 98 countries.
Stefan Lam from Christian Alliance PC Lau Memorial International School in Kowloon City was named the top student in the World Maths Day competition after he answered more than 41,000 arithmetic questions correctly over 24 hours. His school was world number one after students from Grades one to 12 answered more than 812,000 questions, followed by Island School, with 668,964 correct answers.
Seven Hong Kong and three mainland schools were in the top 50. Students around the world logged on to the online competition last Wednesday, which is known as Pi Day and the website matched them with a student of similar ability from around the world.
Over one minute, the students raced through as many addition, subtraction, multiplication and division questions as they could. The student and the school which answered the highest number of questions correctly won.
Students could play as many times as they liked while their time zone was in March 14.
Christian Alliance maths teacher Robert Raymer said it was a great achievement to end in the top two.
