One 100 students from 34 schools in India and abroad participated in the 6th edition of ‘Infinity 2020 – The Ultimate Math Championship’ – the annual Inter-School Mathematics Competition – hosted by Aditya Birla World Academy in association with BITS Pilani to bring out their mathematical best. The event was held on 10th-11th January 2020 in Mumbai.
The winners of ‘Mathematician of the Year’ Gold Certificate & Trophy were Anupsa Swain from Navrachana School, Vadodara and Ivan Toth-Rohonyi from Mahindra United World College of India, Pune. Navrachana School, Vadodara won Gold Certificate & Trophy in Clash of Mathematicians Round, Quizzitch and as overall Champions. The Scindia School, Gwalior and Mahindra United World College of India, Pune won Gold Certificate & Trophy for Bulb Your Ideas and Pass the Baton respectively.
The competition had a very interesting take on Mathematics and was curated to ensure that students solve problems at every stage. Starting from an Ice-breaker session, where students introduced themselves to each other using math problems and solutions to a poster making round where students had to create solutions and present them through a creative hand-made poster. The event also had an individual evaluation round called ‘Clash of Mathematicians’ where students were given a set of 30 questions to solve, followed by a round of ‘Math Challengers’ where students were given 10 questions arranged in increasing order of difficulty which they had to solve within 30 minutes.
An interesting round was ‘Pass the Baton’ which is like a sports relay where each question’s solution is passed on to the next team member to solve another problem. The competition ended with a round of ‘Quizzitch’ with the five best teams and the two teams that could answer most questions won.
Infinity 2020 saw presence of luminaries such as Dr. James Tanton, a research mathematician deeply interested in bridging the gap between the Mathematics experienced by school students and Dr. Ranendra N. Saha, Director of BITS Pilani Dubai Campus as the Guests of Honor.
Infinity is the brainchild of Prodipta Hore, Coordinator of International Initiatives at Aditya Birla World Academy. The principle objective of organizing this contest is to inculcate a feeling of love for Mathematics through fun rounds of learning and bring together a community of Mathematics teachers and students on a platform where they could learn from each other and share their ideas.
Radhika Sinha, Principal, Aditya Birla World Academy said, “Through this competition, we aim to develop the skills of students, whose value far transcends Mathematics. Rounds are designed to constitute the most effective way of discovering and nurturing mathematical talent and to help students dispel the myth about Mathematics as either a difficult, dull or a tedious subject.”
