Te Kura student a World Maths Day star

Thomas Graydon 

On 1 March 2011, Mathletics launched World Maths Day for the fourth year in a row.

This year 5.3 million students tried to beat last year’s world record of 479,732,613 correct answers!  The competitors were from 218 different countries.

This year Mathletics had changed the format slightly which made for a more challenging and exciting sprint off!  There were five age groups (4-7, 8-10, 11-13 and 14-18).  Contestants had 100 games of 60 seconds each to answer as many basic fact questions as possible. 

There were five different levels of difficulty with 20 games on each level:
Level one - basic addition e.g 24+8 or 87+5
Level two - basic subtraction e.g 24-7 or 71-5
Level three - multiplication up to 12x12
Level four - division e.g 24 ÷8
Level five - everything mixed in together.

There were about two hours of game play altogether and I spread mine out over 24 hours doing one level at a time.  In the end I answered 5224 questions which is an average of answering a question every 1.08 seconds!

This result gained me second place in New Zealand and seventy-fourth in the world!  For a while I thought I might be number one in New Zealand but in the final three hours of the 48 hour competition Vincent W overtook me.

Still, I am delighted that I got second place. It was a really exciting day.

Thank you Mathletics!                 

By Thomas Graydon, Year 8
Southern region