T

hird grader Debora Kezia seemed relaxed before the International Mathematics Competitions held in Sevilla School in East Jakarta, where she was due to face her older sister, Christa Lorenzia, 12, in solving 7th grade level math problems.

Christa, on the other hand, thought she might not be able to endure the humiliation.

"That's the thing about losing to your younger sister in a math competition designed for students my level. If she loses that's fine, but if I lose then I'm going to be humiliated," she said Saturday.

Debora and Christa were just two among 100 students from more than 30 elementary and junior high schools in and around Jakarta that competed in the International Mathematics Competitions.

Sevilla School held the competition in cooperation with the Center of Education for Mathematics and Computing, Faculty of Mathematics, at the University of Waterloo, Canada, which provided the problems.

Students between the third and eighth grade were allowed to compete, and were provided with similar problems.

Pria Saptono, a math teacher at Sevilla who helped initiate the competition, said he was happy with how the event was received, saying that students all the way from Bandung in West Java, just two hours away from Jakarta, showed up to participate in the test, though although not all could be included as the school could only provide 100 test packets.

"Most just wanted to try it out and see what mathematics problems from international mathematics competitions were like, but I'm happy that people care a lot about invigorating our education."

He hoped the event would make math more exciting for students by raising theirs' and their teacher's awareness of how math could be applied to everyday situations.

"I think it's important to have these kind of competitions, because it educates children on a level that surpasses the knowledge they get from simply memorizing formulas.

"We hope this competition will open the minds of these students and teachers on how math can be exciting because the problems provided by the University focuses more on logical problem solving rather than memorizing formulas."

Whether that hope will come true remains to be seen, as the competition seemed to be serving another purpose for Jakarta's math whizzes (and their parents): a training ground for their math skills and to maintain the record of a champion.

"It is important for Christa to continue sharpening her mind and maintain her record," her father Edi S. Prawiro said.

Christa and Debora have both competed in national math competitions and broken records, res-pectively as the first female gold medalist in the National Science Olympics and the youngest to finish University level problems by the Indonesian Museum of Records's (MURI). They even have their own website.