Hyewon, Year 10, Gubei Campus

In April, I had the most important maths project I have ever experienced in Year 10. Previously, my teachers had always taught me maths, but in this project, my partner and I had to find out everything from the start, such as the pattern and the formula, and then explain what we found out to our teachers and the other students. I was excited to be a mathematician and have a chance to know more about maths!

As soon as my partner and I started, we chose our topic. I wanted to choose one that no one had ever tried, but the range of maths is so large that it was hard to choose only one topic. However, we accidentally came across a number grid and we determined our topic would be “how to find the maximum product of a pair of numbers selected from a number grid that has the same added value”. It’s algebra, which is my favourite part of maths, so I was very glad to select this as our topic.

Before starting this project, I did not know how to use this maths in real life, but as I prepared for the Maths Fair, I got to use the formula and the theory for real, and I soon realised how it’s valuable. When the Maths Fair finally came, everyone was bustling to finish their project and expecting the visitors. After break time, all of the students were sitting down in the Hall waiting for our teachers to interview us.

After we were interviewed, the Maths Fair started for real! Years 7-9 students came to the Hall, asking questions, solving the quiz, and winning prizes. We had candy at our booth to attract a lot of visitors, but once they started to listen to our questions, they began curiously asking what our topic was about, and tried to solve the problems. I felt great telling them what we had found in the project and it was amazing whenever people understood my explanation and were able to solve the quiz. All in all, the experiences I had during the Maths Fair were invaluable because they allowed me to become even more interested in maths. It helped me take a step forwards towards defining my future goal as a mathematician.