Hamilton maths champion Woojin Kim, 13, with his 2025 World Math Day world championship trophy.
Hamilton mathematics prodigy Woojin Kim, 13, steps back into the global arena tomorrow, trying to secure a fifth World Maths Day title.
“He’s getting upwards of 140 questions in 60 seconds, so he’s pretty laser [focused],” Mandy Bradshaw, the project lead for 3P Learning, the company that helps run World Maths Day, said.
Woojin, a Rototuna Junior High School student, is preparing intensely as he looks to defend his Mathletics World Maths Day crown.
Hosted by online maths program Mathletics, the 48-hour event holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s largest online mathematics competition.
Students aged 5 to 18 go head-to-head in 60-second live rounds, testing speed, accuracy and fluency on addition, subtraction, percentages and a range of word-based maths questions.
“It’s something I enjoy doing,” Woojin told the Waikato Herald.
He has developed a technique on the computer keyboard, using his left thumb to enter answers at speed.
Accuracy is everything for Woojin – and there is little room for error.
“In competition, you’re only able to get three wrong, or it is completely game over. It’s very high pressure,” he said.
Woojin practises for 30 minutes every day but admits his biggest challenge is not the maths.
“It is not challenging, but just my fingers, I can’t control my fingers sometimes,” he said, describing issues with sweaty hands during competition.
Woojin said when he practises, he focuses mainly on avoiding mistakes like pressing two keys at once or missing keys entirely.
While unsure how many questions he can answer per second, he showed the Waikato Herald he could answer 10 questions in just four seconds.
The competition consists of 20 rounds, pushing students to maintain speed and accuracy over an extended period.
“So there’s 20 minutes for 1600 questions,” Woojin said.
He dominated the Mathletics competition in his age group, claiming titles in 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
His father, Brian Kim, said the family had been surprised by his success.
Kim said maths was not something that ran in the family, making his son’s rise even more remarkable.
Away from the screen, Woojin swaps numbers for the fairway and plays golf, where he currently holds a handicap of 22.
This year’s theme of the competition is “United by Numbers”, which reinforces that all students can succeed in maths, Bradshaw said.
She said the competition mirrored the discipline required in sport.
“Students practise and practise, and then when they come up against something difficult, they develop that resilience and laser focus of wanting to achieve,” Bradshaw said.
She said Mathletics tailored challenges to each student’s level.
3P Learning’s EdTech product leader Penelope Naidoo said competitions like World Maths Day were helping shift long-held attitudes towards the subject.
“Maths has a reputation for being dense, dry and difficult, but this is about making it vibrant, alive and engaging. It’s a universal language that’s part of our everyday lives.”
This year’s global ambassador for World Maths Day, ANZ Bank senior project manager Tatiana Devendranath, embodies the long-term impacts of maths education.
Devendrantath was once nicknamed “The Human Calculator” after she answered one million questions during the competition by age 14.
From July 2005 to early 2008, she completed an average of over 300,000 questions per year, or 900 per day.
“Your kids are getting involved in a gamified environment and learning about numbers while competing,” Devendrantath said.
“Maths is crucial to so many careers. Getting involved in a fun way sets kids up for life. It’s certainly better than watching endless brain-rot videos. Get the kids playing maths games instead.”
The competition kicks off at 6am (Sydney time) on March 25 and runs for 48 hours, with Woojin completing 20 challenges during that period.
Winners will be verified from March 27, a process that takes several days, meaning official results are expected about a week later.
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. Before he joined the Hamilton-based team, he worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive. He previously worked as a journalist in Canada for Black Press Media and won a fellowship with the Vancouver Sun.