On March 5th, over 750,000 students from all over the world participated in World Maths Day, an online math competition hosted by Australian company 3P learning in collaboration with Voyager Expanded Learning, a leading publisher of K-12 educational solutions in America.

The competition open to students, 5 to 18 years of age, covers the four facets of math - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The age -appropriate problems are set up as one-minute games with a 20-second break in between. Students are given three chances to get the right answer - after which, a new "game" appears. Each correct answer earns them a point.

The competition lasts for 48 hours, during which students can log in and out as many times as they wish. The student who answers the most questions in this time-frame is declared the winner.

This year a new world-wide record was set with students solving 182,455,169 math problems accurately. The overall winner was a girl from Australia, who is only listed as Tatiana D - She managed to solve 65,199 math problems. The runner-up was Rock Tsui, a 17-year old boy from England with 62,273 questions to his credit. He said he only slept for half-an- hour throughout the 48 hours, keeping himself awake by drinking lots of Red Bull (an energy drink). Last year Rock Tsui came in 17th.

If you missed it this year the next World Maths Day will be held on March 9th, 2009. Make sure you mark it in your calendars and sign up with your classmates or as an individual next year.

source: Worldmathday.com