Starting from December 2025, I host a local* division of the European Mathematical Cup (EMC) in Ottawa, Ontario. In addition, we also offer a small online division for students (geographically located in Canada) who cannot attend in-person.
*If you are interested in hosting your own local division and collaborating on grading, feel free to contact me!
EMC consists of two leagues: Junior (for students 16 y.o. or younger who haven't participated in the IMO) and Senior (open to all participants). Note that the contest is high-level, comparable in difficulty to APMO, EGMO, and IMO. You can review past problems here. Hence, I generally do not recommend participating without advanced olympiad training.
Due to the difficulty of the competition, online and in-person participation requires meeting at least one of the following criteria:
You have been an official or reserve member of the Canadian APMO, EGMO, or IMO team;
You have earned a medal or an honourable mention at the latest CMO;
You have been a student champion at one of the Waterloo contests (Pascal, Cayley, Fermat, or Euclid).
In the registration form, you will be asked to indicate which criterion you satisfy.
Remark: all the results noted above are public information, and hence, are verifiable.
If you are interested in participating, fill out the registration form.
Note: The EMC does not influence team selection for EGMO or IMO. It is a practice olympiad for students who enjoy challenging problems and may wish to prepare for future selection processes.
Math Battle is a multiple-hour event (on average 5-6 hours) that usually happens over a weekend. Two teams have 2-3 hours to work on questions, after which they get together and "fight" for their solutions being good.
See Full Rules or Overview of the Rules for more details about the format.
For more details about each of the contests, see pages below:
I TRU Math Battle (BC)
II TRU Math Battle (BC)
Teachers' Math Battle (Ottawa, ON)
Ottawa Math Battle (Ottawa, ON)
Ottawa Math Battle Tournament (Ottawa, ON)
The Zanzibar Contest has been successfully running since 2023. The locations include Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops, BC), McMaster University (Hamilton, ON), and York University (North York, Toronto, ON).
Rules:teams are given the set of problems to solve together during a specific time frame;
only answers are checked;
teams are allowed only one submission for each problem;
the scores are LIVE in the room with all the teams;
team’s score depends on how many other teams solved the same question right/wrong: more teams solved it right = smaller worth.
2023: Results can be found here.
2024: Results, questions, and pictures can be found here.
Carousel is a project in progress. It has been organised three times (twice during the CMS Winter Camps and once at McMaster University in Winter 2024) for smaller groups of students. Unfortunately, due to organisational difficulties, the contest is not yet ready to be open to larger groups of participants. More to come!
I hosted the Integration Bee (which originated at MIT) during my time at TRU as the president of TRUSU.
RULES
The contest consists of elimination rounds in which contestants find antiderivatives of given functions. As the contest progresses, functions increase in complexity.
In case there are more than 16 people registered, there is a qualification round. All participants get list of integrals and a time limit. 16 people who solve the most integrals get into the first round.
Pairs get formed arbitrary among the 2^(5-n) students of the n-th round. Every pair gets called to the board and an integral is given to students. If a student has an answer, they have to circle it and if it is correct – they win the round and the second person gets eliminated. In case of a wrong answer, opponent has the remaining time to get an answer. In case neither of students solved it, they are given a new integral and a new time limit.
All integrals in the first round will be just checking the knowledge of the basic techniques of integration and are supposed to be solved in 2 minutes. Second round includes tricks and the time limit is 3 minutes. Third round – 3 or 4 minutes. During the final round students might have 4 or 5 minutes to solve an integral. Time might be adjusted by the jury depending on the complexity of integrals and students anticipation.
Students of Math 1230, 1240 and 1250, who get into Top-3 get extra points to their grade (not promised every year).
Competition can get extended to 4 rounds.
INTEGRATION TECHNIQUES EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
Basic techniques:
Integrals of powers and of trigonometric functions
Substitution
Integration by parts
Partial fraction decomposition
Trigonometric substitutions
Tricky stuff:
Integrals of powers of trigonometric functions.
Integrals of hyperbolic functions.
Completing the square.
Elimination of radicals by substitution.
Substituting the tangent of a half-angle.
Winners were the following superstars:
2022: 1 – Alexandr Konakhin; 2 – Wes Shimoyama; 3 – Ruth Befikadu.
2023: 1 – Shubham Jangra; 2 – Brock Young; 3 – Alexandr Konakhin.
Samer Seraj (ON) has published a series of books which I would recommend to students who would like to learn more techniques or new to competitions in general: see Books – Existsforall Academy or Rigorous Elementary Mathematics (4 book series) Paperback Edition (amazon.ca) to purchase.