Regular readers will know that I am a fan of the Australian Maths Trust while also being no fan of the Australian Maths Trust. The AMT, uniquely, does great stuff for Australian school mathematics, and has done so for fifty years. There is the Australian Mathematics Competition, of course, and there is plenty more. But for all this great work, the AMT, at least in my opinion, has also been corporatised, and weirded, beyond all health or common sense. AMT also now clearly caters much too much to the privileged private schools at the expense of the plebs. (It is not clear that AMT can do much about this last issue but it is also not clear that AMT has much cared about it.) As commenter ABC has noted, however, there have been changes at the AMT.
It would appear that CEO Nathan Ford and Board Chair Belinda Robinson have stepped down, and there are two new appointments to the Board. I will leave off quoting from the email and statement that the AMT sent to its members. In brief, this seems like very good news.
I hadn’t realised until recently the extent to which maths competitions are now part of the intense modern competition at schools and with parents, quoted as part of scholarship applications, prestige etc etc. Not easy to see what can be done – but definitively worth considering at a strategic level by AMT. At schools, unis and everywhere, corporatism and competition are forging ahead. Swimming against the tide is hard, but worth trying.
Hi, JJ. I had never thought of maths comps in terms of the scholarship game, but of course it is not surprising.
As for corporatism taking over everything, yes of course. The difference is that AMT only survives because of the massive reserves of good will from many people, including many very strong and very busy mathematicians. To corporatise AMT is to kill it.
I am interested in setting up opportunities for students at my school (a 7-10 school) to prepare for the Australian Mathematics Competition in 2025. Do readers have any suggestions for me?
You should be able to register as your school’s rep for the AMC. Just go to the AMC page and follow the instructions. If and when you get confused, the AMT people were prompt and helpful via email.
The Art of Problem Solving is the classic website for competitions – US based but a lot of free stuff. AMT has some free past papers but solutions cost.
Ah, I misunderstood Terry’s question. Terry, it is easy enough to get past AMC papers, without paying money.
Thanks for the advice. I have collected a good collection of past papers from many countries – including AMC papers. I had not thought of registering with AMC – I will follow this up on Monday. I did not know of the Art of Problem Solving site.
My plan is to start with one class a week; probably in lunch time for interested students and see how it goes. This is how I run the chess club.
Thanks again.
There are a few books of problems collected by topic as well (my own copy is from 1982 but I would guess there have been more recent versions as well…)
This can be particularly helpful if you want to start the practice early in Year 7 and drop a few homework questions in there that are not from a sub-par textbook.
Aops.com does have reasonably priced books including the online versions.
They have a scheme for schools to buy them once and reuse them as students pass through a class.
They also let a teacher control answer access in the online versions.
It’s also a great free community for otherwise isolated young math enthusiasts.
I am a fan because it worked for my son.
For student problems, you could check out the International Mathematical Talent Search, run for several years by George Berszenyi. You can access it by searching online; the Canadian Mathematical Society has its papers. Another thing worth checking out is Tournament of the Towns which is run every year in many countries; as a lot of good things, it started life in Eastern Europe. At a higher level is the Asian-Pacific Mathematics Olympiad. For many years, I ran a correspondence program called Olymon; the problems and solutions are on my website http://www.math.utoronto.ca/barbeau . The level of the problems varies.
I am very sorry to see the problems of the Australian Mathematics Trust. Peter O’Halloran, a dedicated, entrepreneurial and indefatiguable mathematician from the University of Canberra did a masterful job of getting the backing to set it up and recruit the mathematicians to make it successful. BTW, he was also the one who persuaded the IMO delegates to select Australia as a site for the 1988 Olympiad and the Australian government to generously back it as part of the bicentenary celebrations for Cook’s landing. This was not long after Australia first entered the iMO in 1980.
Thanks, Ed. A couple of AMT insiders have expressed genuine hope for the recent changes.
I never met Peter O’Halloran, but the great work Peter did is laid out in a lovely history of AMT written by Peter Taylor, another of the early crew.
Thanks Ed. A nice source of problems.