Member-only story

Yes High School Math in China is Hard!🧨

Here is the final problem from the 2024 Gao Kao Math Paper

Russell Lim
Nice Math Problems
8 min readJun 14, 2024

--

Question source: https://www.gk100.com/read_24162430.htm

You’ve probably heard that high school math in China is hard.

In this article we will look at the last question on a Gao Kao exam that’s just taken place (June 2024). This exam (New Gao Kao Paper 1) is taken in about half of China, meaning about 5 million students just sat this exam last week!

The last question is hard, of course, but it’s also a very nice problem. The topic is arithmetic sequences. Here is the original Chinese text.

There is quite a bit of reading involved. Below is the English translation. Once we work through, you’ll see that although part 3 is certainly very challenging, there are hints in parts 1 and 2 that can help students solve it.

Translation by author

It does take a while to get your head around it. Feel free to read it again as many times as you like.

--

--

Nice Math Problems
Nice Math Problems

Published in Nice Math Problems

Follow this publication if you enjoy ✨nice✨ mathematics problems.

Russell Lim
Russell Lim

Written by Russell Lim

I teach high school mathematics in Melbourne, Australia. I like thinking about interesting problems and learning new things.

Responses (1)