Friday, March 5, 2010

Cayley Contest Experience.

It was quite an experience. I forgot the day it was on but it was the easiest one yet. It was unexpected because Mr. Cheng hadn't warn us about it. Usually we would do the contest at lunch. But this time we did it in the class room. I thought it was the easiest one yet. I'm also pretty sure I got the 3 questions right. But, you can never be too sure......

I think this contest was my last one and I don't have the sheet with me right now.
I could show you guys a question but the Mr. Cheng didn't give us the sheet back yet.
Thank You for reading!

[EDIT]
Mr. Cheng gave the Math Contest sheet back to me. That's a relief! So, I've decided to share one question with you guys :D
Question 10 goes like this.
"A class of 30 students recently wrote a test. If 20 students scored 80, 8 students scored 90, and 2 students scored 100, then the class average on this test was...."

At first when I looked at the question I got confused because I only counted 22 students. And I was like, that isn't 30! But then I realized that I had misread something and that was the remaining 8 students. T.T
So, for this question I first remembered my old French teacher talking about how bad the class average was. Then I thought of a list with all of our names on it with percentages next to them. I found it easier to do that. So, you want to find the total average right? First, you take 20x80, take off the percent for now, and that gives you 1600. Why do this? Average is adding up all the terms and then dividing by the number of terms you have. In this case, you 20 students and a 80% average doesn't give you a term but two terms and you just have to add them together. Do the same with the next two which is 8x90=720 and 2x100=200.

Add the terms now. 1600+720+200= 2620. Now you divide by 3. And you get 84%.
It was a very fun experience when you do it using personal experiences to solve math problems. Sometimes I find some questions on the contest as difficult as the ones for homework.

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