2010 2011issue2

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HKJSMS Newsletter - Jan 2011

香港聯校數學學會

Hong Kong Joint School Mathematics Society

jsms.hk@gmail.com| http://www.hkjsms.org

Newsletter - Jan 2011

Words from the editor

Au Lawrence Dear readers, this is the second issue of the newsletter. In this issue, there are two articles written by two of our officials. At the end of this newsletter, the problem corner containing a few interesting problems for you to try. If there any contents that you would like us to include in future issues of our newsletter, feel free to tell us through email. I hope you enjoy reading our newsletter.

The Experience

Fung Dalton Yin-Nam In this small world, there is a boy who has an extraordinary passion towards mathematics. Looking back, he has been attending mathematics competitions for about eight years already. Eight years of hard work, and eight years of fun. When he was still studying in primary school, he joined a mathematics competition by chance and unexpectedly won a prize. From then on, most of his time has been given to the world of mathematics. He was quite arrogant in his primary school life on the grounds that he believed his knowledge in mathematics was a lot more superior to his friends. He had started learning trigonometric functions (for instance sine, cosine and tangent) in primary six and he was so proud of himself, not until his experience in secondary one. He had a new life in his secondary school: since no one else really knew he was good at mathematics, he treasured every chance to show his ability and wanted to gain acceptance, appreciation and compliments. Right. One day he met a chance of a lifetime to showcase. His friend challenged him with a question: Expand (x+y)8. For sure, this is rather easy for him now; but then he wrote (x+y)8=x8+y8 on the blackboard, which he knew immediately it was wrong by putting x=y=1 but then he was not able to give a correct answer. The shame and embarrassment came right to him at that very moment in front of his classmates. And he knew his attitude was wrong. Beside from the fact that he started to change his attitude, he also realized many of his friends who used to compete in mathematics competition had already left the path. Though he felt pitiful for them, he had no choice but to continue his mathematical journey on his own. Two years later he was in form three. He attended the Po Leung Kuk invitational mathematics competition, which was considered one of the highlights in form three, and managed to get a gold medal and join the training session. He particularly enjoyed the sessions led by his former tutorial teacher and he wholeheartedly appreciated the efforts paid by him when he was on a wheelchair due to an injury in his leg.

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