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UKMT Intermediate Olympiad 2016

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Original post by A02
Same here, i would have got 60 if i had not missed 333 is divisable by 9 for question 1.


Always next year.

Plus, BMO is way more important. IMOK are mainly designed to get people interested in Olympiads and to get them into learning how to solve Olympiad-style questions. BMO are the maths exams that truly matter for Olympiads.
how are u guys going to prepare for bmo1? I read through their number theory book, and a bit of the geometry and combinatorics ones, but don't have a great prep strategy
Reply 142
At the moment, i am slowly working through plane euclidean geomentry. Im lucky in the sense that my maths teacher lets me work on it during lessons, and i am spending about 1 hour a day working on random bmo questions from past papers.
A bit late but I got 58 on Cayley. My papers haven't come back and I don't know where I lost my mark, but I guess it was on question 3, or maybe also the presentation of my solutions.

Anyway, do you think Crossing the Bridge is a good book for preparing for the bmo? I don't know how to prepare- which UKMT books would you recommend?
Personally, I think the intro to number theory is a great book, and reading the first few chapters of introduction to combinatorics, as well as getting an Olympiad primer for past papers, is a good idea, well, At least it's what I'm doing. I also have the Euclidean geometry one, but only a few chapters are accessible to me, it's a tough book, the imo team did every question from it to improve geometry one year. To be honest, at bmo1 u need only circle theorems, congruent triangle, basic knowledge, and basic trig. So number theory, primer, combinatorics I'd recommend. Oh and crossing the bridge I haven't got. I don't think it's based on competitive maths. That being said, I'm sure it's a good read
Reply 145
Original post by Anonymous
A bit late but I got 58 on Cayley. My papers haven't come back and I don't know where I lost my mark, but I guess it was on question 3, or maybe also the presentation of my solutions.

Anyway, do you think Crossing theg Bridge is a good book for preparing for the bmo? I don't know how to prepare- which UKMT books would you recommend?

I have found that doing past papers, even if you dont have the answers, is incredibly useful. Back in January, i could answer 1 questions per paper, now i can do 3-4
It seems that I may actually have 60 on the Hamilton paper. I walked past my head of Maths today and she congratulated me on getting full marks and that my script was in her office. However, that contradicts what my actual Maths teacher said when I saw him (he said I got 57). It was only briefly so maybe he made a mistake and just got the number wrong? I said to my head of Maths that I thought there was something wrong with my Q5 (like my Maths teacher said) and she said that there did't seem to be any problem. So maybe he just made up that I lost 3 marks on Q5? My school didn't have my script when he told me so I think he just made 57 up?

I'll find out tomorrow when I see my Maths teacher what my actual mark was.
Hi everyone
As you guys are generally either better or pretty much equal to me in mathematical ability (I just missed out on Distinction), I was wondering if anyone could work something out for me.

Where they are all different positive integers, can
a^2 + b^2 = c^2 + d^2 = e^2 + f^2 = g^2 + h^2?

Any reply (whether thoughts, an example or a proof) would be very welcome

Thanks
Got 60. Maths teacher got it wrong. :smile:
37 :frown:
Never mind - there's always the Hamilton
Crossing the bridge is a great book - there are a ton of problems and proofs. I'd definitely recommend it!!
I never got to say, but I got 56, which I am very happy with!
Congrats to everyone who did the Olympiad- hope you're all happy
Original post by abcdefghij123
Hi everyone
As you guys are generally either better or pretty much equal to me in mathematical ability (I just missed out on Distinction), I was wondering if anyone could work something out for me.

Where they are all different positive integers, can
a^2 + b^2 = c^2 + d^2 = e^2 + f^2 = g^2 + h^2?

Any reply (whether thoughts, an example or a proof) would be very welcome

Thanks

Boo, hello everybody!

Yes: 4^2+33^2 = 9^2+32^2 = 12^2+31^2 =23^2+24^2 = 1105
I think that's the smallest answer.
The reason this has so many ways to be written as a sum of two squares is because 1105 = 5x13x17. This is important because each of its prime factors can also be written as a sum of two squares.
Also this is very related to multiplying complex numbers. You could try looking into that to find out more.
Yeah, geometry is probably one of the harder things to learn. A lot of it is practice, since the more you do the more you're able to see what will work in a question and what won't. Obviously this applies to all types of question, but with geometry, since they don't teach nearly enough of it in school for the maths olympiads, it's especially harder to do them.
I don't really have any specific tips unfortunately, since it's kind of hard to give a general guide for what to do in certain situations. But with the IMOK you can probably just learn the simpler stuff, e.g. circle theorems and simple trig, and you'll have enough to do the questions. As always, the more geometry you do/read up on, the better you'll get.

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