The main aims of the Australian Mathematics Trust are to enhance and enrich the quality of teaching of mathematics. The ultimate aim of this is to enable students to extend and enhance their knowledge and skills, but in doing so we expedite this by increasing the resources available to teachers, and to the home.

Australian Mathematics Competition Secondary

Our main open event, the long-standing Australian Mathematics Competition, is carefully moderated in each state to ensure that the mathematics needed is within the curriculum. And much of the paper is set in contexts with which classroom experience will enable familiarity. The last part of the paper will contain problems which use the maths the students should know, but often set in contexts which might be new. This will test the student’s ability to solve problems and adapt to varying situations.

Over the years a rich resource of past problems has been accumulated and this is available in the various AMC collections. There are now 4 books published, each containing about 500 problems, and their fully worked solutions. These problems are arranged by topics, already classified. In addition to this, books 3 and 4 now come with difficulty ratings listed next to the question. So if a teacher is looking for a problem on a particular topic and with a particular proven difficulty level, there is a good chance a problem of that type can be found.

AMC Book 5 will be published towards the end of 2012, once the 2012 has concluded and statistics are available.

The books, which are available from the book shop (button on left) are:

• AMC Book 1 (1978 to 1984)
• AMC Book 2 (1985 to 1991)
• AMC Book 3 (1992 to 1998) (with difficulty levels next to questions in latest printing)
• AMC Book 4 (1999 to 2005) (with difficulty levels next to questions)
• AMC Book 5 (2006 to 2012) (with difficulty levels next to questions) Due November 2012

Mathematics Challenge for Young Australians Secondary

The Trust also runs the Mathematics Challenge for Young Australians, with problems of a little more depth, usually developed in stages, and which students have up to 3 weeks to work through. When this is held, in the first half of each year, the teachers are supplied with the solutions and can provide students with help according to their professional judgement.

Again, a large collection of past problems are available and these have been published with solutions in two books for secondary students. These books are:

• Challenge! Book 1 1991 to 1998
• Challenge! Book 2 1999 to 2006

Primary School Events

Both these open events have now also been available to primary schools and similar publications are also available to teachers and students. In these cases approval is pre-granted for questions or question sets to be photocopied for class use.

These books are:

• Problems to Solve in Middle School Mathematics
• AMC Primary Book 1 (2004 to 2008)

Informatics

The Trust also runs a parallel program in schools for informatics. The increasingly popular introductory event is the Australian Informatics Competition. The Trust has now published a book containing the past questions and worked solutions for this event.

E Books

It is planned that in the next year or so these books will start to become available as e-books to enable students and teachers to access the materials on their smart phones and tablets.

Other Books

In fact the Trust publishes a whole suite of problem solving books, and has one of the largest such catalogues available in the English language. Almost 30 books are available in the Trust's Enrichment series, comprising pedagogical books on problem solving and more advanced collections for the student aspiring to compete in national and international Olympiads. All of these books can be found by pressing the book shop button on the menu at left.