PH wins silver in SIMC
A team of Grade 11 students from PSHS-MC won two awards in the 2016 Singapore International Mathematics Challenge (SIMC) held in the National University of Singapore (NUS) High School of Math & Science on the 23rd to 27th of May.
The team, composed of Yzan Paolo Cadigoy (11-D), Elijamin Claveria (11-G), Leo Orpilla III (11-D), and Rafael Santiago (11-D) won a silver Distinction Award and a Special Award for Best Presentation. Sir Petri Español of the Mathematics Unit served as the team’s coach.
Santiago attributes the team’s success to practice. “We [did] the previous SIMC contests in our respective elective classes,” he said. Cadigoy and Orpilla were part of the inaugural class of Sir Fortunato Tacuboy’s mathematical modeling elective, while Claveria and Santiago are part of the school’s mathematics training pool. However, the team admitted that training for the competition was hard, owing to the competition’s format and topic scope. “You never know what you’re gonna get … hindi ka makaka-practice talaga ng specific [topics],” Cadigoy explained.
Contestants were given two days to come up with solutions independently, and they were allowed to use any tool at their disposal, including computers and the internet; this proved helpful for the team to overcome their initial difficulties. “There were problems that we needed the whole two days to get and some questions we needed to code just to get a clearer picture of the problem,” Santiago said. Their team efforts, he said, led them to complete all the problems and have an impressive performance. “Tama lang ang timpla ng members, kaya we did well.”
Around sixty schools participated in this year’s SIMC, the fifth since its inception in 2008. The competition tests contestants’ ability to model and solve difficult mathematics problems based on real-world situations. It is MC’s third year of participation, and its second year to win an award; the 2014 delegation won a bronze medal.
