Rules of the Festival

  1. The Singapore Mathematics Project Festival (hereinafter called “the Festival”) is organized by the Singapore Mathematical Society. The Festival Congress will be held during the one-week school holiday on 30th March 2019. The objectives of the Festival are
    1. To encourage secondary school students in Singapore to carry out and present innovative and creative work in mathematics.
    2. To recognize and emphasize the importance of project-based learning in the secondary school curriculum.
    3. 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 20th January 2020. The language of the Festival will be English.
  3. Projects submitted to the Festival may be submitted to other interschool competition organized by other organizations. However, the projects have to be done by the students within the calendar year of 2019, and may not be submitted to any competition held before 2020.
  4. The Festival will have two sections : a Junior Section and a Senior Section.
    1. 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).
    2. 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.
  5. Any project (on any topic) that is relevant and/or related to mathematics may be submitted to the Festival. 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:
    1. Mathematical content
    2. Creativity and originality
    3. Applicability and relevance
    4. Overall presentationFor 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 10-15 minutes oral presentation plus 3 minutes Q&A session in the preliminary round. The preliminary round will be held on 8th February 2020 and 15th February 2020. 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 of the oral presentations 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 on 30th March 2019.
  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 and the Mathematics and Mathematics Education Group, National Institute of Education. 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 five 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. Schools intending to submit projects undertaken by their students are required to register each project online between 20th December 2019 and 20th January 2020. Payment of the registration fee, together with online submission of the projects must be completed by 23rd January 2019. Projects submitted by 20th January 2020 but whose registration fee has not been received by 20th January 2020 will be disqualified. Late registrations, payments, submissions will not be accepted.
  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 the preliminary round. The nominated teacher’s particulars and contact information must be provided when the project is registered. Nominated teacher judges will be informed of their judging duties by 25th January 2020.
  11. At the end of the Festival, prizes and awards will be given out as follows:
    1. For the Junior Section, the project judged to be the overall best project (with Gold award) by the panel of judges may be awarded the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize (Junior Section) (with cash value of $1,000 including the Gold medal). The school that submits the project winning the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize 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.
    2. For the Senior Section, the project judged to be the overall best project (with Gold award) by the panel of judges may be awarded the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize (Senior Section) (with cash value of $1,000 including the Gold medal). The school that submits the project winning the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize 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.
    3. For each section, projects of sufficient merit will be awarded Gold/Silver/Bronze prizes and honorable mention. Each Gold/Silver/Bronze award project will receive a cash prize of $400/$200/$100 respectively. In addition, a project with good presentation may be awarded speical cash prize of $50. Certificates of participation will be awarded to all participants.