Bunbury pair top national maths contest
Bunbury Senior High School has exceeded the lofty mark it set last year with two of its Year 9 students winning prizes in the 37th annual Australian Mathematics Competition.
Kohta Shimada, 15, won a prize in the 2013 competition in a breakthrough performance, but was joined this year by classmate David Strong, 15, after the pair placed in the 100th percentile of the intermediate competition.
Kohta said he was surprised with the result after having trouble with the final questions.
“I guessed the last two,” he confessed.
David said he was also uncertain of his final answers.
“I was confident with the first 25 questions, but didn’t know the last five, ” he said.
Kohta and David’s results led to an invitation from the Australian Mathematics Trust to participate in the Australian intermediate mathematics Olympiad and the pair earned a distinction and credit, respectively.
BSHS head of mathematics Tyril Houghton said the pair’s performance was a credit to the school’s academic selection program and the students’ teacher.
“Leon Rose has done remarkable work with them,” she said.
Both students are studying the Year 10 mathematics program and David said the opportunity to skip ahead would give them an edge in the future.
“When we get older we will be a year ahead,” he said.
“It’s a harder workload but we will already know most of it.”
