Recalling the many friends he made in his youth at math camps in socialist East Germany, Wolf launched the interactive math contest years after moving to Canada in 2001, and becoming a Brock University math professor.
“My son didn’t have the same opportunities to make friends while getting introduced to math,” the Thorold resident told the Thorold News.
“We want them to discover this love of math, but not make it too easy, so they will be challenged. It lessens their anxiety about math and teaches them to think logically and it improves critical thinking.”
As chair of Brock’s math department, Wolf created the Caribou math contest, named after a Canadian animal, since a now worldwide math contest which started in Australia is called the “Kangaroo.”
“But I work full-time here at Brock and my research and teaching occupies 100 per cent of my time, so the only way to do them was online on the Internet.”
Wolf enlisted the help of Brock student Mark Willoughby to program the contest.
“Nine months later, we were ready,” he said, adding that “600 kids participated on the Internet but it crashed in the middle of the day because we’re not professional programmers. But that woke up the university and they helped us make the database more efficient.”
“Two weeks later, we had a new contest with a couple hundred participants, and it was a success and we wanted to do it again."
"Math," he explained, "can be challenging, like a sport, and become addictive. It takes endless, relentless practice to get better."
“We are proud that we invent a lot of questions to introduce kids to something that can be totally fascinating and helpful in everyday life. We have reports from parents and teachers that kids were bored and not participating but were gifted, and the Caribou Math Contest gave them a chance to shine, and it changed them. They got good marks in math for the first time, and then in everything else. One principal reported that the first day of school, a kid knocked on his door and asked, ‘When’s the Caribou Math Contest’? It’s the kids who drive the growth of the Caribou.”
No ordinary math contest—filled with basic formulas—the Caribou features “common sense, flexibility and logical thinking instead of focusing on just your knowledge. I’m constantly making new material,” said Wolf, often staying up until 1 a.m. to find new questions. Working with students, he spends “months, sometimes years, to create a new interactive question.”
"People are motivated because questions are interactive," and accompanied by a mini course, called ‘Some Food for Thought,’ “to introduce them to what mathematics is; abstract structures, not just everyday calculations. It can be fun if people are exposed to it. You can get fully engaged in it. At school, there’s no time to introduce people to this type of math. It’s mostly calculations at school.”
“My son was in Grade 4 at the time and the contest was for Grades 3 and 4 students. Then, we added Grades 5 and 6, and we had it six times a year. The contest ran for two years here in Niagara. Then, we thought we could overlap the questions to save time; on the same day, have Grades 3 and 4 and 5 and 6. Then we added Grades 7 and 8 and by that time, we allowed all of Ontario to participate.”
Once the Caribou became province-wide, Wolf added Grades 9 and 10 and 11 and 12 as contestants.
“By that time, we got letters from the U.S. asking to participate. The contest takes place during school time, from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., so parents can’t help,” he said, adding that the Caribou now runs in every time zone in the world.
“For the last years, we’ve had about 28 countries participating,” with student numbers increasing from 15 to 35 per cent each year. Interest in math and science is higher, he explained, “in countries that are not as rich as Canada, because it opens the world for them, for example, to study in a different country. Math is one way out for children in Pakistan, Iran, and other countries.” For many Canadian students, “math is not as high on the priority list.”
The chair of the National Association of Parents with Gifted Children in Iran “asked us to translate in Persian,” Wolf added. “This year, we will start Chinese as the fourth language” for the Caribou contest.
“Because we’re online,” he said, participating teachers “don’t have to mark or do paperwork; but have to ensure students have access to a computer. We send emails to teachers prior to the contest so they can practice with their class. Schools started Caribou Math Clubs, because we have it six times a year.”
“They can register as late as the day of the contest. The contest is marked that evening and the kids can sign in and see their solutions; what’s right and what’s wrong. They can also see their rank in the school, in the school board, in the province, in the country, and in the world. It’s all free to the teachers to see which areas need work. Students can print certificates at home.”
The contest is not entirely free anymore, noted Wolf, “Because I’m paying the (programming) students regular salaries.”
His entourage now includes 10 students—some of whom work full-time, some part-time, and some on an hourly basis, to run the Caribou.
Part of the outreach involves online tutorials to help kids understand the questions. Anyone can try the latest October contest for free, he added, “to see what it’s like.”
“Since last year, we have detailed solutions, which take extra time, so we charge a small fee for it.”
“In our (Thorold) basement, I recorded my son completing those questions that were solved least, and posted them free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaribouContest.
Videos of his son Oliver demonstrate, for instance, “how to hang nails in such a way—using math—that the pictures hanging over several nails will fall down when any one of the nails is pulled.”
Occasionally, he’s seen sporting a fun costume, or haircut, representing his Thorold hockey team.
Oliver, who attended Richmond Street School and Thorold Secondary School, is now studying math in Waterloo.
The next season of Caribou Math Contests starts this October.
For more information, visit the website at https://cariboutests.com
