About “Kangaroo”
Association “Kangaroo without Borders”
In the early 80s, Peter Holloran, a mathematics professor from Sydney, decided to organize a new type of game-contest for Australian students: a survey with multiple-choice answers, checked by a computer. Thousands of students could participate in the contest simultaneously. The success of the Australian national mathematics competition was enormous.
1991. In 1991, two French mathematicians decided to organize this game in France, naming it “Kangaroo” in honor of their Australian friends.
The first game gathered 12,000 college students. Later, school and high school students also participated in the contest. 1993. In June 1993, the French organizers of “Kangaroo “(www.mathkang.org) arranged a meeting in Paris for the leaders of European mathematics competitions. The invited mathematicians were very surprised by the success of the “Kangaroo – Mathematics for All” competition in France: 1991 – 120,000 participants, 1992 – 300,000, 1993 – 500,000.
1994. In May 1994, Belarus, Hungary, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Romania decided to participate in the contest, which ensured the game’s great success.
1994. In July 1995, at the Council of Europe session in Strasbourg, the General Assembly established the Association “Kangaroo without Borders” from 10 European countries.
Now this association unites participants from many countries. The association’s goal is to widely spread general mathematical culture and, of course, to organize the “Kangaroo” game-contest, which takes place in all participating countries on the same day.
The contest format was preserved – a list of questions with multiple-choice answers, a specific contest day and hour, and the main principle – “a prize for everyone”, for each participant. Each country has its own organizing committee, its own prizes, and the results of different countries are not compared with each other.
Contest Goals (Objectives)
The “Kangaroo – Mathematics for All” game-contest promotes the popularity of mathematics and increases students’ interest in it. The game not only stimulates the learning of the school program but also encourages students to participate in other olympiads, contests, and competitions.
Contest Format
The contest has one round, without selection competitions. This competition takes place in March, on one day, in one hour, and consists of 30 questions, which are arranged in increasing order of difficulty, with 5 answer options offered for each question.
Distribution and Experience Sharing
The Association, to the best of its ability, stimulates the development of cultural exchange between participating countries. For this purpose, books, brochures, booklets containing all kinds of mathematical ideas, data, games, and puzzles are distributed among participants, and each year joint publications of contest winners from various countries are published and summer meetings are organized. Approximately half of the contest budget is allocated for these publications and prizes. The official languages of “Kangaroo” are French and English.
France provided financial and technical support for the meeting of association members in Paris (January 1995) and Eindhoven (December 1995). Starting from 1996, all countries participate in ensuring the organization of annual meetings in proportion to their number of participants.
In Budapest (October 1997), 21 member states approved rules that specify financial and other conditions regulating the participation of added countries in the contest.
The pioneers of this contest in Riga in 2006 were the students of our private secondary school ISMA “Premier”, who showed very good results. But the winners were then 6th-grade students – Vika Kalashnikova, Anton Bardishev, and Konstantin Okunev.
2013. In 2007, 17 schools with a total of 1297 students joined the ISMA “Premier “”kangaroos”.
Since 2014, we have become full members of the association Le Kangouron sans fronties (Kangaroo without Borders). Today, it includes more than 82 countries from Europe, Asia, and America, with the number of participants exceeding 6 million. The idea of Latvia’s admission to the association belongs to ISMA “Premjers” school. The main organizational work is undertaken by the Latvian Organizing Committee of the “Kangaroo” competition under the auspices of “Riga Nordic University”.
- 2014. 3,537 students from 81 Latvian schools participated.
- 2015. more than 15,000 students from 199 Latvian schools participated.
- 2016. more than 19,286 students from 219 Latvian schools participated.
- 2017. more than 23,855 students from 247 Latvian schools participated.
- 2018. 15,895 students from 239 Latvian schools participated.
- 2019. 16,500 students from 250 Latvian schools participated.
- 2020. 5,108 students from 135 Latvian schools participated.
- 2021. 9,379 students from 211 Latvian schools participated.
- 2022. 14,653 students from 225 Latvian schools participated.
- 2023. 17,767 students from 251 Latvian schools participated.
- 2024. 17,259 students from 248 Latvian schools participated.
- 2025. 12,891 students from 221 Latvian schools participated.
Contest Symbolism
The author of the international “Kangaroo” contest logo is the famous French artist and designer Raoul Raba raba.mathkang.org
In the secret laboratory created by the artist, dozens of animated films dedicated to the contest are stored.
The international association of the contest granted us the rights to use the contest logo in Latvia.