Math Awareness Week Contest 2025

The contest will begin Monday, April 21 and run through Friday, April 25. Each day a new question will be posted on this website at (approximately) noon Central Daylight Time.

The winner was Jason Patel, a math teacher at Fordland HS, and the runner-up was Lanie Deng, an 8th grade student at Central HS in Springfield, MO. Quinn McGarry, a math teacher at Clever HS, Brad Meyer, who works for Ozarks Public Television, Brayden Miao, an 11th grade student at Central HS in Springfield, MO, Elie Ghosn, a high school math teacher in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Ethan Patterson, a graduate student and member of Information Services at MSU, answered all five questions correctly.

Well done!


Monday

This year is the centennial of the death of this German mathematician. He was known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, and non-Euclidean geometry. He developed the Erlangen program which posited that to study a geometry, one should study the group of transformations of that geometry. He also constructed a one-sided surface that is named after him.

Who was he?

Answer:  Felix Klein 


 Tuesday

Find the last five digits of 20252025.

Answer:  15625 


Wednesday

What is the largest number of regions five planes can divide space into?

Answer:  26 


Thursday

The octagons in the figure are regular. What is the ratio of the area of the shaded octagon to the area of the large octagon?

 octagon

Answer:  2−√2 


Friday

The layout of the streets in a certain part of a city consists of a 6×6 grid where a central 2×2 grid has been replaced by a park (see the figure). How many ways are there to go from point A to point B if you can only go to the right along horizontal streets and upward along vertical streets?

grid

Answer:  524 


Read more information about Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month.