UH Manoa 2008 Mathematics Contest
You are invited to participate in a math contest
sponsored by the UH Manoa Math Department
Photo Gallery from 2007 Contest
Problems from 2007
Contest
The contest will be held at:
- The University of Hawai`i at Mānoa
- Keller Hall 303
- Saturday, May 10th 2008
- 10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Lunch will be provided. The competition is open to all high school students in Hawai`i. Students may enter individually or as members of a school team.
Contest Rules
The contest will consist of two sessions. The first session is from 10am until noon. The second session starts at 1pm. There is a lunch break in between.
During each session the students will be offered a set of five problems, the same problems for each contestant. Each solution will be graded out of 10 points. Likely scores are 0,1, or 2 points in case of no or little progress towards a solution and 10, 9, or 8 for perfect or nearly perfect solutions.
There is an emphasis on well-written solutions. Participants will work individually.
The highest possible, but highly unlikely, score is 100. We suggest that students try to do well on a few problems that seem solvable to them.
The contestant with the highest score wins. For the team competition we will add the scores of the three highest scoring team members. We will announce the results and winners publicly on the first math league meeting in Fall 2008.
Awards for individual achievements:
- 1st Place: $100.00
- 2nd-4th Place: $50.00 (each)
- The best teams will also be recognized
No registration is required for individual students. To register as a team, please contact:
|
Prof. Pavel Guerzhoy |
The mathematics is not part of the school curriculum. Contestants will have to draw on their logic and creativity to win.
Sample Problem 1:
There is a path that a knight can take to go over a chessboard visiting each square exactly once. (It's difficult to find, but not relevant to the problem.) Now remove the upper-right and lower-left squares. Is it still possible for the knight to go over each square exactly once?
Solution:
Sample Problem 2:
480 bugs are sitting on the squares of a 16x30 board, one bug in every square. We say that two bugs are neighbors if their squares share a side. They take off, and land on a 15x32 board, again one bug in every square. Is it possible that all former neighbors stay neighbors on the new board?
Solution:
Practice Problems: Click to open PDF file.
Contact Professor Guerzhoy for additional practice problems.
