8 students have the winning formula for MATHletes Challenge 2015

19 May 2015

Eight exceptional students and four schools were crowned this year’s MATHletes Challenge Champions at the All-Ireland final which took place in Dublin City University on Saturday, May 2nd.

The four month-long tournament involving more than 13,000 students drew to a close with the ultimate show-down attended by more than 200 students. Eight dedicated and deserving winners from from counties Dublin, Clare, Cork, Mayo and Waterford were crowned with the All-Ireland 2015 titles. Four schools from Dublin, Mayo, and Wexford also took top honours.

Based on the Khan Academy approach to learning and teaching maths, MATHletes Challenge is a free online maths tournament for students from 4th class in primary school to 5th year in secondary school.

The icing on the cake for this year’s tournament was the announcement that DCU will generously give €10,000 in scholarships to MATHletes winners on top of the €20,000 in prizes that were up for grabs. Brian MacCraith - DCU president said:

“DCU is delighted to support the MATHletes Challenge competition. It is a wonderful initiative which brings excitement to the learning and application of mathematics. It has already engaged tens of thousands of students all over Ireland in a manner that will have lasting effects on their future. We were pleased to announce university scholarships for the winning 5th year students both as an endorsement of the MATHletes learning experience and as an incentive to students to be the best they can at mathematics."

MATHletes Challenge is supported by the Department of Education and is the brainchild of entrepreneur and investor Sean O’Sullivan who congratulated all those who took part in this year’s competition.

“These students are some of the brightest young mathematical minds in Ireland. By introducing them to the Khan Academy and MATHletes, we are giving them the tools, confidence, and ability to pursue further education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields and build a world class technical workforce for Ireland.”

The free competition, which was launched in January, saw students spend over 3 million minutes competing on the Khan Academy’s free online maths learning platform, completing over 4.5 million problems and mastering over 2 million maths skills.

The participation level in MATHletes Challenge was four times that of its debut year in 2014.

For further information visit www.mathletes.ie