UKMT Senior challenge

Hi there, I’ve recently began practicing for the UKMT Senior challenge, I’ve been using their past papers to practice but is there any other methods that would be great to practice for the challenge? Thank you.

Reply 1

mqb2766

21

Original post by lukeanimin

Hi there, I’ve recently began practicing for the UKMT Senior challenge, I’ve been using their past papers to practice but is there any other methods that would be great to practice for the challenge? Thank you.

How are you doing / what do you feel you need to improve in? Practicing is the main way to improve and you could do some open book, so if you cant see how to do a question "quickly" spend a bit of time trying different things/... not worrying about the time.

A few things you could do
* In the ukmt archive there are the "solutions and investigations" which contain extra problems for the longer questions which may be worth hitting if you get a question wrong / are unsure / ... Similarly, some questions can be answered several different ways, so see if there are different ways of answering a question.
* There are the reimann zeta slides in drfrost at https://www.drfrostmaths.com/page.php?id=4 which broadly cover smc/bmo/step/mat. Theyre probably a bit thorough just for the smc, but some good tips in.
* Problem solving can sometimes get you started/solve a question quickly. So simplifying a problem, stick numbers in/spot magic numbers, sketch it, consider extreme cases, transform a problem, ...
* If you come across questions based on things like triangular numbers/.... and youve not come across them before, spend a bit of time finding out about them. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0168 is a problem based way to find out about some of such stuff (and the drfrost slides and google ...)

Reply 2

FairAboutUK

10

I strongly against my kids doing lot of past paper just for exam wise. I don't against do some past paper though. I usually suggests them do three papers when they first take the challenge. Read lots of books or watch youtube maths video probably more help for maths study.

Reply 3

Ignorabimus

9

Original post by lukeanimin

Hi there, I’ve recently began practicing for the UKMT Senior challenge, I’ve been using their past papers to practice but is there any other methods that would be great to practice for the challenge? Thank you.

You could look at the STEP Support Programme, the STEP I stuff can build some basic problem-solving skills that will be useful for most topics in maths and if you can get used to the STEP I stuff you can even try STEP II/III which develops those skill further and introduces new perspectives and approaches to problem-solving in general. If you like the support programme's slides, you can venture further by trying random STEP questions from 1404 available in the step database.

UKMT Senior challenge

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you