A Perfect Score and So Much More

Happy New Year! And what better way to start 2023 than with some excellent University of Waterloo Beaver Computing Challenge results. During the first weeks of November, Junior School students rolled up their sleeves and turned on their laptops or tablets to take the University of Waterloo’s Beaver Computing Challenge contest. This 45-minute competition, consisting of 15 online logic problems, was completed in Mr. Paul Hollett’s, Mr. Rory Campbell’s, Ms. Stephanie Cummings’, and Mr. Jonathan Cheverie’s computer classes. Students exercised their best reasoning skills and raced the clock as the minutes ticked away on the screen in front of them. Like many of the other University of Waterloo Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) contests, the Beaver Challenge focuses on problem solving with an emphasis on computational and logical thinking. The problems are always interesting, and some can be quite challenging. Questions are inspired by topics in computer science although a comfort level with general mathematics curriculum is required. Over 27,000 students across the country took part in the contest.

 

Once again, many of our students performed above the national average. It is worth noting that our top student in Grade 9, Ezra Choo ‘26, achieved a perfect 90/90 score on this contest! That means that Ezra placed first out of the 7821 students who wrote the Grade 9/10 contest. Way to go, Ezra!

 

I congratulate all our high achievers and commend those students who took part. There is no better way to improve critical thinking and problem-solving skills than to take this kind of a challenge. The following KES students are our top contest scorers and achieved Certificates of Distinction from the University of Waterloo for scoring in the top 25% of contestants nationally:

 

 

 

 

We look forward to continued math enrichment in 2023 including our next Dalhousie University Math Circles seminar on Wednesday, January 25 with the topic of problem solving with algorithms. Interested students can see me for more information and to register.