Pretoria – Cabinet has welcomed the hosting of the 55th International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) at the University of Cape Town from 3 - 13 July.
“This is an opportunity to showcase our country’s ability to host world-class events and profile South Africa’s top-class mathematicians. A total of 109 countries have already registered for this IMO,” said Communications Minister Faith Muthambi on Thursday.
Briefing journalists at the Imbizo Centre in Parliament, following the Cabinet meeting of 25 June, the minister said this would be the first time for the competition to be held on African soil.
The Department of Basic Education, in collaboration with the South African Mathematics Foundation, will be hosting the IMO.
The IMO is a problem solving contest for high school students held in different countries each year in July. This year, 582 students from 109 countries in five continents will participate in the IMO.
Each participating country enters a team of up to six high school students, who will sit for 4.5 hours solving three challenging problems per day, for two consecutive days. Each problem has a maximum of seven points and covers areas of maths that are not covered in schools.
The participants will be accompanied by a team leader, who is the country’s representative on the jury and a deputy leader, who is responsible for the well-being of the team. Teams may also be accompanied by observers.
Their solutions are assessed by the team leaders and their marks are approved in consultation with a team of coordinators, appointed by the host country.
The top half of the contestants are awarded with gold, silver and bronze medals. All contestants, who do not win a medal, but have solved at least one problem correctly, earn an honourable mention.
A Pre-Olympiad camp will start on 30 June. Team leaders will arrive on 2 and 3 July to set the papers and teams are expected to start arriving around 6 July.
A big opening ceremony will be held on 7 July, and participants will start writing papers on 8 and 9 July. After that, the marking of papers will start.
The closing ceremony will be on 12 July and participants will leave on 13 July 2013. – SAnews.gov.za
