The number of Taiwanese students who obtained full marks decreased in this year’s American Mathematics Competitions test (AMC) for pupils in grade 10 and below (AMC 10) and grade 12 and below (AMC 12), but Taiwanese students still outshone their counterparts from other Asian countries, an educational foundation said yesterday.
Statistics from the Nine Nine Cultural and Educational Foundation showed that only 17 Taiwanese students received a full score on the AMC 10 this year, down from 26 students last year.
Two got a full score last year in the AMC 12, but no one out of the 6,532 students from Taiwan this year garnered a full score.
However, on a scale of zero to 150, Taiwanese students on the AMC 10 scored 100.7 points on average — 20.3 points more than the average score for 72,528 students from around the world, the foundation’s statistics showed.
Foundation president Ho Yang-ming (何炎銘) said this year more students from Taiwan, China and Singapore participated in the competitions than other Asian nations, adding that the number of Taiwanese students who earned full marks on the AMC 10 was higher than other countries in Asia.
“The Taiwanese students earning a full score used to come from urban areas, but some of the students with a perfect score this year came from the nation’s remote areas,” Ho said during a press conference yesterday. “This could serve as an inspiration for students studying at schools in remote areas.”
Liu Yu-chung (劉又中), a senior from Yunlin’s Private Bliss Wisdom High School, scored the highest among 6,532 students from Taiwan on the AMC 12.
Liu, who has been granted admission to National Taiwan University’s Department of Mathematics, said that despite limited learning resources in Yunlin, he had insisted on improving his math performance by discussing math problems with his classmates.
Yu Yu-hao (游育豪), an eighth grader from Banciao’s Sikun Junior High, who received a perfect score in the AMC 10, said he never attended cram school to improve his math skills.
“I just love solving difficult math problems because the easier ones are [boring] while the difficult ones are more challenging,” Yu said.
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