15-year-old Nigerian defeats UK, US, Chinese pupils to win Global Maths Competition

EDITORIAL CHOICE: A 15-year-old Nigerian, Faith Odunsi, a secondary school student has set a new record by winning the Global Open Maths annual competition. Global Open Mathematics Tournament is an international competition with participants from Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australia.

Faith an SS3 student from Ijebu in Ogun state in Nigeria had to defeat students from the US, UK and other countries to clinch the top prize. Her journey to the prize was no surprise as she had earlier set a record by answering 19 questions in 60 seconds in the Cowbellpedia competition.

She shared her experience winning the global competition in an interview where she revealed that winning the “tough competition” made her happy and honoured.

The 15-year-old narrated how she excelled in different stages of the contest to emerge the overall winner in her words below

In the first stage, there was a computer-based test and we had to answer many questions in one hour. My score in the test was 66. The second stage took the same format and I also scored 66.

“The quarter and semi-finals were on Microsoft themes. We were asked questions and we put in our answers; the first to put in the correct answers got 10 points.”

Speaking about how she prepared, Faith said she made sure the competition did not affect her academic activities. So, it’s after the school period that she had another class with her teacher who coached her for the contest. She also studied at night from 11pm to 12am.

As the winner of the contest, Faith was presented with a monetary award of $1,000 (N379,000, according to the CBN’s current exchange rate). She added that the organisers said they would come for the official presentation of the award.

Before winning the global contest, Faith had in 2018 set a record in Cowbellpedia by answering 19 questions in 60 seconds. She intends to study Computer Engineering for her tertiary education.