The Beaver Computing Competition

Earlier this term all our Junior School students took part in the annual University of Waterloo Beaver Computing Challenge as part of our computer courses. These contests are written by thousands of students across Canada and are meant to test students’ logic and computational thinking skills while introducing them to concepts such as encryption, structured data, algorithms, binary numbers, and nodes and edges in graphs. These advanced concepts were disguised as entertaining word problems.

The Challenge is separated into three age categories (Grades 5 and 6, Grades 7 and 8, Grades 9 and 10) and our students did well in each of the three categories. A big congratulations to students Lily Farias ‘30 and Frances Grant ‘30 who had the top scores in the Grades 5 and 6 contest; Rachel Hilborn ‘28, Chelsea James ‘29, and Bethany MacDougall ‘29 who were our top results in the Grades 7 and 8 contest; and Charlie Boyle ‘27, Alejandro Delgado ‘27, and Blake Kielty ‘27 who were at the top of the Grades 9 and 10 contests. While these results were all exceptional, our top score in the Junior School was Lincoln Choo (Link) ‘29 who scored a perfect score in the contest! With his 90/90 result, Link tied for first place in the country amongst students who wrote this year’s Beaver Computing Challenge!