It’s got nothing to do with farms or penguins. Instead, it’s all about… mathematics. Today is World Maths Day, and the cornerstone of the celebration is a competition held by UNICEF to find out which kids, and schools, are the best in the world at maths.
The “game” takes the form of a 60-second maths challenge, taken online in real-time against other students, with entrants broken up over four age categories. At time of writing most categories were being dominated by entrants from the Indian sub-continent, United States, United Kingdom and Australasia.
The point here isn’t to win stuff. The best in the world will only get a medal, not a car or a speedboat. No, the point is to raise money, for the student’s own schools as well as those UNICEF feels could do with a leg-up. By the conclusion of the challenge tomorrow, students should have passed the $US1 million raised tally with ease.
Joe Mama
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 5:55 AMI played this game when I was in school, it cost 50$ each for a year for a class of 30. We only played it once or twice.
Josh Franks
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 9:32 AMErr, link?
Elly Hart
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 9:44 AMPost updated with link!
Aaron
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 4:36 PMI had one kid on the desktop playing this last night and one on the laptop, over two hours straight snapping away at sums.
Occasional there’d be a shout of, “oh no, there’s a Chinese kid in my group, I never beat them!”.
it was crazy, they were all speed mathing against kids in ireland, France, Pakistan, south Korea, all over the place. Maybe it was the time difference but there was no US kids in any of the games my kids played.