Multiple achievements in Mathematics have all added up to an outstanding year for Christ’s College students from Year 9 to Year 13.

Several students have achieved High Distinction in international Mathematics competitions, a College Year 10 team has won Cantamaths, and one young mathematician has qualified for round two of the New Zealand Maths Olympiad.

In the Otago Junior Mathematics Competition, Aaron Kwak has been named among the top 30 prize winners in Year 11 while Year 10 student Bill Li and Year 9 student Lucas Zhang have achieved Distinction.

In the Australian Maths Competition (AMC), Year 13 student Sean Jang and Year 10 student Ericsson Ye have been awarded High Distinction while Gordon Liu (Year 12), Jack Hastie (Year 11), and Angus Laing (Year 9) have achieved the highest Distinction scores for their respective year groups at College..

In Kangourou sans Frontières (KSF), the largest maths competition in the world with more than 6 million competitors, four College students – Sean Jang (Year 13), Jack Hastie and Sam Bennett (Year 11), and Ericsson Ye (Year 10) – have all been awarded High Distinction.

Seeking to find the most outstanding young mathematicians in the country, the annual New Zealand Maths Olympiad offers a challenging programme. This year, Year 10 student JJ Wada was among a select group chosen to compete in the round two qualifying section.

In the hard-fought Cantamath Competition earlier in the year, Ericsson Ye, JJ Wada, Charlie de Costobadie, and Josh Shannahan recorded a perfect-score golden ticket in winning the Year 10 trophy. The following students were selected to represent College in the competition.

Year 10
Team 1: Charlie de Costobadie, Josh Shannahan, JJ Wada, and Ericsson Ye
Team 2: Bill Cross, Marco Howe, Paddy Newton, and Michael Rankin
Reserves: William Butler, Bill Li, and Yannis Zhang

Year 9
Team 1: Alex Johnstone, Connor MacKenzie, Louis Sharr, and Lucas Zhang
Team 2: Will Coughlan, Hugh Davis, Tom Kerr, and Felix Liu
Reserves: Zac Croft, James Reed, and Sean Zhang

Results

Australian Maths Competition

High Distinction/Best in School – Ericsson Ye

High Distinction – Sean Jang

Distinction – Baxter Bretherton, William Coughlan, Hugh Davis, Tom Eyre-Walker, Angus Laing, Lucas Zhang, Bill Cross, Charlie de Costobadie, Jackson Douglas, Bill Li, Paddy Newton, Michael Rankin, Joji Wada, Yannis Zhang, Sam Bennett, Jack Hastie, Alex Johnston, Aaron Kwak, Mike Ma, Yanxin Liu, Boyuan Li

Otago Junior Mathematics Competition

Distinction – Thomas Kerr, Lucas Zhang, Marco Howe, Bill Li, Ericsson Ye, Ryan Gu

Merit – Logan Ainsworth, Sam Bennett, Richard Brown, Charlie Doutch, David Wayne

Top 30 – Aaron Kwak

Kangourou sans Frontières

High Distinction – Sam Bennett, Jack Hastie, Ericsson Ye, Sean Jang

Distinction – James Anderson, Alex Johnstone, Felix Liu, Luke Mostert, Lucas Zhang, Logan Ainsworth, Tomas Coberger, Bill Cross, Ryan Gu, Aaron Kwak, Patrick Newton, JJ Wada, David Wayne, Samuel Cross