Thousands of Students Take Part in the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge

OTTAWA, ON – The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce the results of the 2020 Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge (COMC). The COMC is supported by the Actuarial Profession, particularly the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) and the Society of Actuaries (SOA). Nearly 6,000 students wrote the Open on October 29, 2020. For the 2020 COMC, in partnership with the Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network (ASDAN – Beijing), more than 1600 high school students in China registered to write the competition. This year, the CMS also formed a new partnership with the Thai-Canadian Alumni Association which ran our competitions in Thailand with great success! Many Thai students were excited to participate in a Canadian competition for the first time and more than 165 students in Thailand wrote the competition.

Due to the global pandemic, the COMC was offered in two formats this year, paper and online. This allowed for students who were participating in remote learning to be able to participate.

The Chair of the COMC committee, Dr. Robert Woodrow is pleased with the participation rate given the extra challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic:

Much credit goes to the CMS staff for putting in place the possibility of writing the contest virtually, supervised using Zoom, and to Crowdmark for the platform to upload the results and have them graded. This year too we welcomed a group of contestants from Thailand.  From my observations in grading and validating examinations, it appears that this year’s contest saw more students showing success and interest in the challenging problems.

Thanks to the funding from RBC Future Launch program, the CMS was able to offer the competition free of charge to Black and Indigenous students for the 2020 competition, , an initiative that the CMS will continue in the years to come.

The COMC is the initial qualifier for the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad (CMO), which will take place on March 11, 2021. Students can also qualify to write the CMO through the Canadian Mathematical Olympiad Qualifying Repêchage which will take place between February 16 and 23, 2021. The COMC also provides opportunities for selection to the Canadian Team to the European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO). More than 336 high schools participated in the competition, which was marked electronically using Crowdmark again this year.

2020 COMC Winners

Canadian Champions

Gold	Yiu Him Chung, Seaquam S.S., Delta, BC
Silver	Kevin Min, TTMath School, Markham, ON
	Jiangxu(Justin) Wan, University Hill Secondary School, Vancouver, BC
Bronze	Jiarui Cao, TTMath School, Markham, ON
	Michael Hahn, University Hill Secondary School, Vancouver, BC
	Zhening Li, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
	Andrew Wen, Phillips Academy, United States
Honourable Mentions	Warren Er Bei, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
	Tiger Che, SpringLight Education Institute, United States
	Thomas Frith, Abbey Park H.S., Oakville, ON
	Antoine Labelle, Collège de Maisonneuve, Montréal, QC
	William Szeto, University of Toronto Schools, Toronto, ON

International Students

Gold	Stanve Avrilium Widjaja, Simetri, Indonesia
Silver	Nikola Kolarov, High School of Math and Sciences Acad. Nikola Obreshkov, Bulgaria
Bronze	Sanjana Das, SpringLight Education Institute, United States
Honourable Mentions	Tianyang Huang, Shanghai Foreign Language School, China
	Natchanon Mongkoltananont, Thai-Canadian Alumni Association, Thailand
	Worrawat Rungaramsin, Thai-Canadian Alumni Association, Thailand
	Sitta Tantikul, Thai-Canadian Alumni Association, Thailand
	Filbert Ephraim Wu, Math Trainers Guild of Philippines, Philippines

For more information on top scorers in each province and different grade levels, click here.

About the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS)

Founded in 1945, the Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) promotes the advancement, discovery, learning and application of mathematics. The CMS promotes mathematics through a rich array of activities including scientific meetings, publications, awards, prizes, grants, camps and competitions.

For more information on the COMC, please contact:

Dr. Robert Woodrow Chair, CMS-COMC Committee Dept. Of Mathematics, University of Calgary Tel: (403) 220-6325 woodrow@ucalgary.ca

or

Sarah Watson Manager, Meeting & Events Canadian Mathematical Society Tel: (613) 733-2662 ext. 733 comc@cms.math.ca