2O12

Junior
Mathematics
Competition
Organised by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics | University of Otago
 Year 9 (Form 3) Prize Winners
First Christopher Brown Christ's College
Second Kevin Shen St Kentigern College
Third Alex Elzenaar Upper Hutt College

Top 30:
Maxwell Benson, Auckland Grammar School Nick Fan, Auckland Grammar School Kevin Huang, Auckland Grammar School
Sang Wook Kim, Auckland Grammar School Dylan Lee, Auckland Grammar School Michael Williams, Christ's College
Andrew-James Tyler, Christchurch Boys' High Jack Wang, Christchurch Boys' High School Maxine Bainbridge, Columba College
School
Jacob Cheatley, Hamilton Boys' High School Christopher Mayo, Hamilton Boys' High Daniel Jeong, Hillcrest High School
School
Reka Norman, Huanui College Louis Jennings, John McGlashan College Luke Nie, John McGlashan College
Numa Wadhwania, Lynfield College Sunny Wang, Macleans College Hannah Williams, Macleans College
Danny Xie, Macleans College Harvey Barron, Nelson College Sean Lau, Otago Boys' High School
Shi Hun Kim, Rangitoto College Benjamin Wolyncewicz, Scots College Matthew Beardsworth, Te Aho o Te Kura
Pounamu
Barnard Patel, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu Hamish Weir, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu James McClymont, Wellington College

Year 10 (Form 4) Prize Winners

First Henry Jiang Macleans College
Second Hebe Hilhorst Wakatipu High School
Third Ji Woo Kim Christ's College

Top 30:
James Brown, Auckland Grammar School Kai-Wen Ho, Auckland Grammar School Allen Huang, Auckland Grammar School
Marko Ruslim, Auckland Grammar School Hugo Wagner-Hiliau, Auckland Grammar Christine Li, Diocesan School for Girls
School
Michael Woods, Hamilton Boys' High School Georgia Lock, Hastings Girls' High School Brandon Jones, Havelock North High School
Emma Jeong, Hillcrest High School Harriet Plant, Hillcrest High School Alexander Miller, Hutt International Boys'
School
Martin Luk, King's College Sachi Rathod, Lynfield College Daisy Huang, Macleans College
David Kim, Macleans College Hannah St Clair, Napier Girls' High School Johnny Mottershead, Otago Boys' High School
Linore Brav-Cubitt, Pakuranga College Felix Brookie, Palmerston North Boys' High Samuel Dobson, Palmerston North Boys' High
School School
Kayla Fairbairn, St Cuthbert's College Natsuko Fujiwara, St Peter's School Sorren Hunter, Wanganui High School
(Cambridge)
Rhaz Solomon, Wanganui High School Edward Hughes, Wellington College Tracy Zhang, Westlake Girls' High School

Year 11 (Form 5) Prize Winners

First Keniel Yao Macleans College
Second Jeremy Penrose Christ's College
Third Alan Chen Macleans College
Top 30:
James Crosby, Auckland Grammar School George Dodd, Auckland Grammar School Richard He, Auckland Grammar School
McRae Keane, Auckland Grammar School Timothy Lobb, Auckland Grammar School Henry Tombleson, Auckland Grammar School
Jiayu (Jenny) Cao, Auckland International Angela Shi, Auckland International College Hae Sung (Danny) Shin, Auckland International
College College
Ke He, Burnside High School William McAuley, Burnside High School Matthew Withers, Burnside High School
Daniel Schipper, Hillcrest High School Rachel Cho, Kristin School Lucy Nie, Kristin School
Christian Silver, Kristin School David Wu, Lynfield College Daniel Baard, Macleans College
Kylie Pan, Macleans College Peter Huxford, Newlands College Moira Thomson, Otago Girls' High School
Andrew Bamford, Palmerston North Boys' High Kate Salmon, St Cuthbert's College Yu Fu Wang, St Kentigern College
School
Francis Moynihan, St Peter's College (Epsom) Matthew Epps, St Peter's School (Cambridge) Bea Wooding, Tawa College
As always, reading carefully was an essential skill. A lot of information was contained in the questions, but
if you didn't read it correctly, then you tended to make little progress.

Question 1 (YEAR 9 AND BELOW ONLY)

Binary (base 2) numbers are very useful for computers. The only digits that are used are 0 and 1. The first
few numbers in binary (starting at 1) are 1, 10, 11, 100, 101 . . . . A larger example is 100011 (35 in
decimal), which could also be described in word form as "one, followed by three zeros, followed by two
ones".
(a) What decimal (base 10) number does the binary number 110 represent?
6. This was meant to be an easy start to the competition, 110 being the next number after the given 5.
It proved too hard for many. Some succeeded by adding, say, 100 + 10 (i.e. 4 + 2).
The addition and multiplication tables for binary are
+ 0 1 × 0 1
0 0 1 0 0 0
1 1 10 1 0 1
(b) Perform the binary operation 1001 + 111, giving your final answer in binary.
10000. Not extremely well done, although there were many successes .
The bitwise operator AND takes two binary numbers and compares corresponding digits to produce another
binary number. AND returns a 1 as a digit if and only if both input digits are 1, and 0 otherwise. For example,
101 AND 110 would produce 100.
(c) Perform this bitwise binary operation, giving your final answers in binary:
1011011 AND 1001000
1001000. This, and (d) were the best answered in the question. Many did these two questions in
vertical tables.
Another bitwise operator is XOR.
(d) If 1011011 XOR 1001000 equals 0010011, what does 11001100 XOR 10101010 equal?
01100110. Again, working the given example vertically helped many students.
(e) What effect does attaching a zero to the end of a binary number have to the value of that number?
It doubles it, as in the example 10 → 100 (i.e. 2 → 4).
(f) Find the value of the binary power problem 1000 1000, giving your final answer in binary form (you
may describe it in word form if you wish).
This proved challenging, as expected, although several students managed it. One way to answer it is
to 'translate' it to decimal (i.e. 8 8) which is (103)8, (mixing binary and decimal up), or (10) 24, which is
1 followed by 24 zeroes.

Question 2 (All Years)

Leo is a strange man. He has recently set up his own Mathematical rule combining two positive (including
zero) integers. Here are some examples of combining two numbers in Leo’s world:
2 ⊞ 3 = 10, 5 ⊞ 6 = 55, 7 ⊞ 2 = 63, 8 ⊞ 4 = 96
Here ⊞ represents Leo’s rule and we still denote ordinary addition and subtraction by '+' and '-'.
(a) Briefly verify by showing necessary working that Leo’s rule of combining numbers could be
equivalent to a ⊞ b = a(a + b)
for the given numbers above. Assume that this is Leo's rule for the rest of the question.
Then calculate 9 ⊞ 6.
2 ⊞ 3 = 2 × 5 = 10,
5 ⊞ 6 = 5 × 11 = 55,
7 ⊞ 2 = 7 × 9 = 63,
8 ⊞ 4 = 8 × 12 = 96.
Easy, but all four needed to be shown, as instructed, for full credit.
Two students, from the same classroom, found an alternative algebraic answer, so they do exist.
However, the equation given was the one called for.
9 ⊞ 6 = 9 × 15 = 135 This also had to be given. Sometimes missed out, although frequently correct.
(b) (i) Consider the equation a ⊞ b = 0. What can be said about a and b?
a must be 0, b can be any number. Often, the 'b' answer was missed.
The people who 'got in trouble' here were those who said a(a + b) = 0, so either a = 0
(correct) or a + b = 0, so b = -a (incorrect as negatives are not allowed).
 (ii) Consider the equation a ⊞ b = a where a ≠ 0. Find the exact values for a and b.
a = 1, b = 0. Well done.
(c) Evaluate (compute) the expression (a ⊞ b) – (b ⊞ a) when:
(i) a = 9, b = 2
(ii) a = 3, b = 3
(iii) a = 6, b = 0
77, 0, 36. Well answered, although some insisted that, for example, 9 ⊞ 2 = 2 ⊞ 9 and so they
always got 0, including part (d).
(d) As briefly as necessary, explain algebraically in the simplest form possible what (a ⊞ b) – (b ⊞ a)
equals, using as many of the ordinary four arithmetic operations as you need.
(a ⊞ b) - (b ⊞ a) = a(a + b) - b(b + a)
= (a - b)(a + b) or a2 – b2
Either answer was accepted, as this was not an exercise in expanding or factorising. Most got the
first answer, although Year 9 students seldom got the last answer (some did).

Question 3 (All Years)

A group is a Mathematical system containing n elements {a1, a2, a3, . . . , an} and an operation º and it must
obey four rules:
(i) Closure: If aj and ak are members of the group, then am = aj º ak must also be a member of the
group.
(ii) Associativity: If aj, ak, and am are all members of the group then
(aj º ak) º am = aj º (ak º am)
(iii) Identity: there exists one member, ai, of the group which is called the identity and has the
property that, for all members ax in the group then
ax º a i = a i º a x = a x
(iv) Inverses: Every member ax of the group has an inverse member ay of the group such that
ax º a y = a y º a x = a i
(a) The following is the table for a group of order 4 (this means there are four elements) under the
operation º. Use the table to answer the two questions which follow.

º 1 3 5 7
1 1 3 5 7
3 3 1 7 5
5 5 7 1 3
7 7 5 3 1

(i) What is the value of (3 º 5) º 7 ?

(ii) What is the inverse of 5?
(i) 1 and (ii) 5. Well answered, especially the first part. For some reason, several students missed the
second part out. Perhaps students didn't number their answers carefully.
An ordinary clock is an example of a group having twelve elements (being the hours {1, 2, 3, . . . , 12}) and
an operation f (followed by) so that, for example,
9f5=2
(b) For an ordinary clock, what is the identity?
12. For example, 12 f 7 = 7 f 12 = 7. Answered correctly by about half the candidates.
Imagine now that on a distant planet there are only four hours on their clock, {1, 2, 3, 4} (i.e. it is order 4)
and the operation f (as shown before part (b)).
(c) Draw up on your answer sheet (do not do it on this question sheet) the table for the distant planet
clock showing the results of all the hours under the operation f. Note: the table is not necessarily
equivalent to the table shown in (a).
f 1 2 3 4
1 2 3 4 1
2 3 4 1 2
3 4 1 2 3
4 1 2 3 4
 Not that well answered, although not that uncommon. Are there any other groups with 4 members
with a different 'structure'?
(d) A member of a group is called a generator if it can be combined using the group operator with itself
any number of times to create the other members of the group. Find the two members of the distant
planet clock which act as generators.
1 and 3, because when you go 1 f 1, for example, you get 2, 1 f 1 f 1 gives 3, and 1 f 1 f 1 f 1 gives 4.
Similarly 3 f 3 gives 2, 3 f 3 f 3 gives 1, and 3 f 3 f 3 f 3 gives 4.

Question 4 (All Years)

In this question, you may assume that all orbits are circular and that there is no interaction between any
planets caused by gravity or other physical phenomenon.
In a far off star system, two planets Arcon (with an orbital period T1) and Barcon (with an orbital period T2)
orbit the local star, with Arcon being closer to the star than Barcon.
(a) If the area within Arcon's orbit is 3π units2 around the star and the area within Barcon's orbit is 10π
units2 around the star, how far further from the star is Barcon (as a ratio) than Arcon? Give your
answer as a decimal number to three decimal places.
πr2 gives the radius of Arcon at √3 and that of Barcon is √10. When you divide (quite a few students
subtracted √10 by √3), you get Barcon's orbit is 1.826 (3 d.p.) times that of Arcon. Several students
correctly answered this, but it wasn't that common.
(b) If instead Arcon takes one year to orbit the star (i.e. T1 = 1), and Barcon takes four years to orbit the
star (i.e. T2 = 4), show that if they are at their closest approaches to each other currently, then in
4
years they will again be at their closest approach.
3
Note: if you can develop the general formula in (c), then it would be sufficient to substitute T1 = 1
and T2 = 4 into your formula (with working) for full marks (in other words you may wish to attempt
part (c) first.
4
From part (c), with T1 = 1 and T2 = 4, you get 1 × 4 / (4 - 1) = 3 . Easy marks for those who
4
answered part (c) correctly. Much more common was the answer which assumed the answer was 3
4
and then went on to show that if it was 3 , then you must eventually (through a process which was
4
often mystical) reach 3 . In other words, it was common to start with the answer to reach the
answer.
(c) In the general case, where Arcon takes time T1 to circle the star, and Barcon takes time T2 to circle
the star, what time elapses between their closest approaches to each other? (Give your answer in
terms of T1 and T2, in their simplest possible form.)
A few students answered this correctly, and they all did it a different way. Here is one student's
answer, virtually chosen at random:
Let T1 be smaller than T2. Let the time when they meet again be t. Then
t t Multiply and 'tidy'.
= −1
T2 T1
tT2 - tT1 = T1T2
t(T2 - T1) = T1T2
T1T2
t=
T2−T1
 Question 5 (All Years)
A block is placed on a rectangular grid of arbitrary size. This block can either be moved one square vertically
or horizontally, or it can be slid vertically or horizontally. In the latter case, the block only stops sliding when
it reaches the edge of the grid.
The possible actions on the block are:
1. Move the block one square to the right (MOVE-R)
2. Move the block one square to the left (MOVE-L)
3. Move the block one square upwards (MOVE-U)
4. Move the block one square downwards (MOVE-D)
5. Slide the block right until it reaches the right edge (SLIDE-R)
6. Slide the block left until it reaches the left edge (SLIDE-L)
7. Slide the block upwards until it reaches the top edge (SLIDE-U)
8. Slide the block downwards until it reaches the bottom edge (SLIDE-D)

An operation is defined as a finite sequence of actions, where each action taken

leaves the block on a different square than any other action taken in the operation. The length of an operation
is the number of actions in the operation.
(a) Describe a possible operation of length 2 that can be used to move the block in the diagram to the
bottom right corner (the square labelled X).
Either SLIDE-R then SLIDE-D or SLIDE-D then SLIDE-R. Easy and well answered.
(b) The block in the diagram can be moved to the square labelled Y in an operation of length 4.
Describe one possible way in which this can happen.
There are eight possible ways. Only one was required.
SLIDE-U, SLIDE-L, MOVE-R, MOVE-R or SLIDE-L, SLIDE-U, MOVE-R, MOVE-R or
SLIDE-L, MOVE-R, SLIDE-U, MOVE-R or SLIDE-L, MOVE-R, MOVE-R, SLIDE-U or
SLIDE-U, MOVE-L, MOVE-L, MOVE-L or MOVE-L, SLIDE-U, MOVE-L, MOVE-L or
MOVE-L, MOVE-L, SLIDE-U, MOVE-L or MOVE-L, MOVE-L, MOVE-L, SLIDE-U
Well answered.
Let n be the number such that the shortest length an operation can have to move the block between any two
squares on the grid is at most n.
(c) Find n, with a brief explanation, if the grid:
(i) is the same dimensions as the grid in the diagram (10 by 10).
An operation of length 10 is required. An operation taking the block from a corner to one of the
centre four squares requires 5 MOVES vertically and 5 MOVES horizontally. Any other operation
will require less MOVE actions or will substitute in some SLIDES.
Not uncommon, although it was meant to be 'challenging'.
(ii) has dimensions a by b, where a and b are both even numbers.
a+b a
An operation of length is required. This is similar to (i) except there are vertical
2 2
b
MOVES and horizontal MOVES in an operation taking the block from a corner to one of the
2
centre four squares.
Again, not as badly answered as we'd expected. These two questions show there are many capable
students.
(d) How many distinct operations of length 3 or less are there for moving the block in the diagram to the
square labelled X?
Almost everybody tried to list them. A few succeeded. Our solution tries not to list them.
Assume three actions in our operation. If the first action is not SLIDE-R or SLIDE-D, it could be any
of six other actions. Any of these six actions must be followed by either SLIDE-R then SLIDE-D or
SLIDE-D then SLIDE-R. So there are 12 possible operations thus far. If SLIDE-D occurs first, there
are three possible actions that are not SLIDE-R next, followed by SLIDE-R. Thus 15 possible
operations thus far. Similarly there are three possible operations if SLIDE- R is the first action. Thus
18 possible operations thus far. Since we can also have two actions in our operation, we also have
SLIDE-R, SLIDE-D and SLIDE-D, SLIDE-R.
There are a total of 20 possible operations.