[cmath] CANADA WINS FIVE SILVER AND ONE BRONZE MEDAL AT THE 47TH MATHEMATICAL OLYMPIAD

[Graham Wright]

For release: IMMEDIATE (July 18, 2006)

CANADA WINS FIVE SILVER AND ONE BRONZE MEDAL AT THE 47TH MATHEMATICAL 
OLYMPIAD IN LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA.

Competing against students from 90 other countries, Canadian high 
school students have done extremely well with all six students winning 
medals at the 47th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) 
Ljubljana, Slovenia, from July 6-18, 2006.

The six students who competed for Canada were: Farzin Barekat, 
Sutherland Secondary School, North Vancouver (British Columbia); 
Viktoriya Krakovna, Vaughan Road Academy Toronto (Ontario); Yang 
(Richard) Peng, Vaughan Road Academy, Toronto (Ontario); Dong Uk 
(David) Rhee, McNally High School, Edmonton (Alberta); Peng Shi, Sir 
John A. MacDonald Collegiate Institute, Toronto (Ontario); and Yufei 
Zhao, Don Mills Collegiate Institute, Toronto (Ontario).

The team was accompanied by the Team Leader Robert Morewood (Crofton 
House School, Vancouver) and the Deputy Team Leader Naoki Sato (Art of 
Problem Solving (AoPS) Incorporated).

At the Closing Ceremony on July 17th, Silver Medals were awarded to 
Farzin Barekat, Viktoriya Krakovna, Dong Uk (David) Rhee, Peng Shi and 
Yufei Zhao; and a Bronze Medal to Yang (Richard) Peng.

"Our students really came together as a team.  They trained hard and 
showed their individual strengths. They all made progress on every 
question in an extremely tough competition. I am proud of their 
achievements." said Robert Morewood.

"The IMO is the world championship high school mathematics 
competition. The problems were very difficult and all the Canadian 
students have done very well. They demonstrated the problem solving 
skills, knowledge and creativity that is so essential to compete at 
this very high level," said Dr. Graham Wright, Executive Director of 
the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS), the organization responsible 
for the selection and training of Canada's IMO team.

Although students compete individually, country rankings are obtained 
by adding the teams' scores. The maximum score for each student is 42 
and for a team of six students the maximum is 252. The Canadian team 
placed 15th out of 90 competing countries with a score of 123.

Since 1981, Canadian students have received a total of 16 gold, 34 
silver, and 58 bronze medals.

The six members of the Canadian IMO team were selected from among more 
than 200,000 students who participated in local, provincial and 
national mathematics contests. Prior to leaving for the 47th IMO, the 
team trained at Dalhousie University from June 24th to July 2nd and in 
Ljubljana, Slovenia from July 3rd to July 10th.

The 2006 IMO contest was set by an international jury of 
mathematicians, one from each country, and was written on Wednesday 
July 12th and Thursday July 13th. On each day of the contest, three 
questions had to be solved within a time limit of four and a half 
hours. Team members must be less than 20 years old when they write the 
IMO.

The top 10 teams and their scores are: China (214); Russia (174); 
Korea (170); Germany (157); USA (154); Romania (152); Japan (146); 
Iran (145); Moldova (140); and Taiwan (136).

The team will be returning to Canada today (July 18th), arriving at 
Pearson International Airport (Terminal 1) on Austrian Airlines flight 
71 at 2:45 PM.

Sponsors of the 2006 Canadian IMO team include: the Canadian 
Mathematical Society; NSERC PromoScience; the Imperial Oil Foundation; 
Sun Life Financial; the Ontario Ministry of Education; Alberta 
Learning; the Nova Scotia Department  of Education; the Newfoundland 
and Labrador Ministry of Education; the Quebec Ministry of Education; 
the Northwest Territories Ministry of Education; the Saskatchewan 
Ministry of Education; the Samuel Beatty Fund; Maplesoft; the Centre 
de recherches mathématiques; the Fields Institute; the Pacific 
Institute for the Mathematical Sciences; the Centre for Education in 
Mathematics and Computing, University of Waterloo; the Department of 
Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University; the Department of 
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary; the Department of 
Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Brunswick at 
Fredericton; the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University 
of Ottawa; the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, York 
University; and the Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto.

The 48th International Mathematical Olympiad will take place in Hanoi, 
Vietnam, in July 2007.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Graham P. Wright
Executive Director
Canadian Mathematical Society
(613) 290-3046 (Cell)
(613) 562-5702 (CMS Office)
director at cms.math.ca
www.cms.math.ca/Competitions/
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