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Rules of the Festival
1. The Singapore Mathematics Project Festival
(hereinafter called "the Festival") is jointly organized by
the Singapore Mathematical Society and the Department of Mathematics,
National University of Singapore. The Festival Congress will
be held during the one-week school holiday in March 2008. The
objectives of the Festival are
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To encourage secondary school students in Singapore to carry
out and present innovative and creative work in mathematics,
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To recognize and emphasize the importance of project-based
learning in the secondary school curriculum,
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To complement the examination-based Mathematical Olympiads
organized by the Singapore Mathematical Society.
2. The Festival aims to showcase mathematical
projects completed by secondary school students in the year
preceding submission. Projects may be carried out by teams of
not more than four members from the same school. The
deadline for submission is 7 January 2008. Projects
submitted to the Festival must not have been submitted to any
other interschool competition organized by any other organization.
The language of the Festival will be English.
3. The Festival will have two sections : a Junior Section and a
Senior Section.
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For the Junior Section, projects submitted must be
carried out by students who are in Secondary One or Two in the Express
Stream (including the Gifted Education Programme), or Secondary One,
Two or Three in the Normal Stream (Academic or Technical) in the
year in which the project is carried out (i.e., the year preceding submission).
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For the Senior Section , projects submitted must be
carried out by students who are in secondary schools in the year in which the
project is carried out.
4. Any project (on any topic) that is relevant and/or related to
mathematics may be submitted to the Festival.
Submissions should be in the form of one written report and a soft copy. The written report (of not more than thirty A4-sized pages) should be
essentially self-contained and state clearly the objective and conclusion of
the project, and may be supplemented by computer software, models, and/or
journals/log-books/ scrapbooks. In addition, each submission must include a
summary of about two pages. Materials submitted will become the property of the
Singapore Mathematical Society and will not be returned.
5. Projects submitted to the Festival need not involve advanced
mathematical ideas or concepts, and problems investigated need not be solved
completely or conclusively. Projects submitted will be judged based on the
following Criteria of Assessment:
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Mathematical content
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Creativity and originality
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Applicability and relevance
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Overall presentation
For the purpose of judging creativity and originality, submission of journals on the project is strongly encouraged.
6.
Authors of all projects will be asked to give a 15 minutes oral presentation plus 5 minutes Q&A session in the preliminary round. The preliminary round will be held on 19/1/2008 and 26/1/2008. The presentation and the written reports will be assessed by a panel of judges made up of teachers and mathematicians.
7. Based on the scores on oral presentation and written projects, we will invite teams with potential of getting at least a silver medal to be interviewed and give an oral presentation at the Festival congress in March.
8. Another panel of judges will assess all shortlisted projects based on the material submitted, the interview and the oral presentation. They will be made up of mathematicians from the Department of Mathematics, National University of Singapore, Mathematics and Mathematics Education Group, National Institute of Education, and school teachers. Each member of the panel of judges should not be involved in any way in the supervision of any project submitted to the Festival. Decisions made by the panel of judges shall be final.
9. Each school is invited to submit not more than three projects to each section of the Festival. There is a registration fee of $50 per project for schools which are SMS institutional members and $60 per project for schools which are non-SMS institutional members. The names of the participants, along with the fees and project submissions, should be forwarded by the Head of Department of Mathematics (of the competing school) to the Festival Subcommittee in the prescribed format before the announced closing date. Late submissions will not be accepted except under special circumstances. The receipt of all entries will be acknowledged.
10. We need a lot of manpower to assess projects in the preliminary round and we seek the cooperation of schools that submit a project to nominate a teacher to sit in the panel of judges in preliminary round.
11. At the end of the Festival, prizes and awards will be given
out as follows:
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For the Junior Section, the project judged to be the overall
best project by the panel of judges will be awarded the Foo Kean Pew Memorial
Prize (Junior Section) (a cash prize of $1,000). The school that
submits the overall best project in the Junior Section will be awarded the Singapore
Mathematical Society Shield (Junior Section), which will be kept by the
school until the next festival. A Shield may be kept permanently by a school
that has submitted the overall best project for five consecutive
festivals.
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For the Senior Section, the project judged to be the
overall best project by the panel of judges will be awarded the Foo Kean Pew
Memorial Prize (Senior Section) (a cash prize of $1,000). The school
that submits the overall best project in the Senior Section will be awarded the Singapore
Mathematical Society Shield (Senior Section), which will be kept by the
school until the next festival. A Shield may be kept permanently by a school
that has submitted the overall best project for five consecutive
festivals.
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For each section, projects of sufficient merit will be awarded Gold/
Silver/Bronze prizes and honorable mention, limited to at most three Gold, five Silver and five
Bronze prizes. In addition, for each of the criteria of assessment listed under
Rule 5, the project which scores the highest for that criterion and of
sufficient merit may be awarded a special cash prize of $200. Certificates of
participation will be awarded to all participants.
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