13-year-old Fraser Heights Secondary student aces three senior-level math contests
Richard Huang, a Grade 8 student at Fraser Heights Secondary, recently received top marks in three math competitions featuring questions for Grade 11 and 12 level math courses.
A Grade 8 student at Fraser Heights Secondary is top of his math class after acing three separate national math contests for senior students.
Richard Huang recently participated in the Fermat and Euclid mathematics contests – national competitions by the University of Waterloo for Grade 11 and 12 students, respectively – and achieved a perfect score of 150 in the Fermat and a near-perfect 99 in the Euclid, making him second in all of Canada. He also took the United States’ AMC 10/12, hosted by the Mathematical Association of America, and finished in the top 1% of writers, putting him in the top 200 to 300 math students in North America.
“I was kind of nervous, I knew I’d have to practise digging at the roots of a problem and using critical thinking and deep thinking skills to find the answers,” said Huang of his strategy. “Math is divided into four modules: combinatorics, algebra, number theory and geometry. Once you do some problems in a certain module, you can summarize what you did and use it to solve other problems in the same module.”
“These concepts are not taught in secondary math, these are above a lot of math teachers,” said Huang’s teacher, James Ahn, with a laugh.
Something of a born math whiz, Huang said he took a natural liking to math and was able to write and recognize numbers by the age of 18 months old. At three, he was able to add, subtract, multiply, divide and apply some exponential rules.
“My parents taught me some parts of math and I connected the math with the real world,” he said. “I learned the numbers and experienced math through objects.”
As a pre-teen, Huang took the AMC 8 test, so he had some idea of what to expect from the AMC 10/12. His perfect performance on the Fermat also helped him on the Euclid as some of the concepts in the Grade 11 questions were repeated on the Grade 12 test.
“Math competitions offer opportunities for students to sharpen their problem-solving skills and think critically, and apply math concepts in creative ways,” he said. “You also need a bit of luck to succeed in those two contests. When the problems suit your strengths, you can mostly succeed, but if it doesn’t, there may be some problems with the problems.”
Huang said a big part of success came from practising with his peers in the school’s math club. He’s currently running for the club’s executive position and wants to help other students improve in math through weekly competitions. He also has his sights set on “harder contests,” namely the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge (COMC) and the Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest (CSMC).
“He’s a Grade 8 student taking these contests at a Grade 12 level, and to be able to do that well, I’m not sure there are many harder contests out there,” said Ahn.
“We have five senior students currently running the math club and they’ve done a great job of creating an environment for students to explore math and learn in a little different form than what you get in school. Seeing Richard wanting to continue that would be great for our school.”
“What’s so lovely about Richard is that his passion is from within,” said principal Tim Cross. “It’s not coming from an external reason, and the fact that he wants to give back tells me that he’s really confident with what he’s doing and he wants to share his success. It’s only going to benefit him, the school and the greater community. Next time I have a math problem, I’ll be reaching out to him.”
Congratulations, Richard, on all of your success!
