Puzzles a thrill for maths whizz

The Sunday Times 22 July 2012
by Matthias Chew

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Thanks Matthias (who can write so well!) for the report and professional photographer, Yaohui, for trying his best to make Lim Jeck smile but failed :)

Puzzles a thrill for maths whizz, by Matthias Chew

Love for numbers runs in the family for S'pore boy who topped international contest.

The obsession with mind-bending conundrums came early. A favourite childhood activity for Singaporean student Lim Jeck, who won the International Mathematical Olympiad last week, was to create puzzles for others to solve.

A peek into a jotter book belonging to the then 10-year-old reveals drawings of intricate mazes, ranging from squiggly lines to the three-dimensional. Now 17, his interest in unravelling puzzles has not abated. His favourite maths topics - geometry and combinatorics, which is the study of permutations and combinations - are relatively light on theories and formulae. To excel in those areas, one needs a logical mind and problem-solving skills.

His bent in navigating spatial and logical challenges helped propel Jeck to the top of the Olympiad in Argentina a week ago, beating 547 other pre-university students from 100 countries. He is the first Singaporean to do so. In the process, the National University of Singapore (NUS) High School student attained a perfect score, also a first for a Singaporean, and the only one in this year's contest, which attracts the brightest young mathematical minds from around the globe. But he is not done. He is aiming to compete again at next year's Olympiad, which will be the last he qualifies for, as he is due to graduate from NUS High next year as well.

The thought of repeating his feat does not faze him. Said Jeck: "I have one year to prepare for that and I will be ready for the challenge." With the contest setting the hardest questions in the last two years in both his pet topics, it played to the Year 5 student's strengths. Jeck came close last year, but missed out on a perfect score by a mere two points 'because I was not careful'. The result? He was second overall. Even then, it was the best showing by any Singaporean, till his first place finish this year.

An interview with the Lim family at their Stirling Road condominium yesterday revealed a gifted teenager who prefers computer games to cramming for tests. "He doesn't study too hard, but somehow manages to do well," said his mother, Madam Ng Bee Yong, 47, who runs an IT software firm with Jeck's father, Mr Lim Beng Cheng, 51. She said his As come in maths, physics, chemistry and computing, but he gets Bs and the occasional C for languages.

Jeck, however, is reticent in person, and it was his older sister, Min, who revealed that his other hobbies are reading and watching anime, and solving jigsaw puzzles. He was more forthcoming on e-mail. Asked who he would credit for developing his talent in maths, he singled out his family. "Without their guidance and support I wouldn't have come so far." His sisters, Min, 18, who is in JC 2 at Raffles Institution, and Li, 13, in Secondary 1 at NUS High, are both also mathematically inclined. The siblings are a fixture at local maths competitions, and Min also represented Singapore at the China Girls Maths Olympiad last year.

But like many boys his age, Jeck's mind these days is not on maths so much as the online game Minecraft. The multi-player game allows players to build structures, and Jeck exploits the game's lack of limits to create complex puzzles for his friends to manoeuvre out of. Indeed, playing Minecraft was the first thing Jeck did when he arrived home from Argentina on Wednesday.

While he has yet to decide where and what to study at university, one thing has not changed from when he was a little boy. He said he "would like to make maths, as well as computing, my career".