Six pupils from six primary schools participated in this year’s finals of the Georgetown Math Quiz for Primary Schools, with Dave Chowtie of Graham’s Hall Primary emerging victorious after more than two hours of solving math problems.
The quiz was held at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development located at Kingston, Georgetown. The pupils were scored based on their performance in three segments; knowledge, algorithms and reasoning.
Chowtie was closely followed by Kyra Adams of West Ruimveldt Primary, Akeem Fowler of Stella Maris, Mikaeel Nedd of St Ambrose, Kyle Melville of North Georgetown and Jaden La Rose of Winfer Gardens respectively. As it related to the three segments, Fowler emerged winner of the reasoning category, Melville the winner of algorithm category and Chowtie along with Adams gained top spots in the knowledge category.
The six pupils were all awarded with trophies and certificates for their performances.
Winning the quiz came as a shock for Chowtie. “I didn’t expect to win ‘cause all the other children are really really smart,” an overjoyed Chowtie commented to Stabroek News. He related that while the quiz wasn’t that challenging there were some hard questions which he couldn’t answer. Regardless, it was a learning experience for him and he will continue to work on the math problems that he is having difficulties with.
He further related that his favourite part of the quiz was the ‘reasoning category’ as it allowed him to exercise his ability to think quickly. According to the Mathematics Coordinator of the Georgetown Education Department, Corine Osborne, at the beginning of the Preliminary sessions, the pupils found the quiz very challenging but as they kept learning, they slowly overcame the challenges. However, in the reasoning category, the students performed excellently. “The reasoning part was the best, because the children were really reasoning out and coming up with the answers in a jiff of a time,” she said.