On March 4th, over thousands of students from all over the world will participate in World Maths Day, an online math competition hosted by Australian company 3P learning, in collaboration with Voyager Expanded Learning, a leading publisher of K-12 educational solutions in America.

The competition, open to students, 5 to 18 years of age, covers all four facets of math - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The age-appropriate problems are set up as one-minute games with a 20-second break in between. Students are given three chances to get the right answer - after which, a new "game" appears. Each correct answer earns them a point.

The competition lasts for 48 hours during which, students can log in and out as many times as they wish. The student with the most correct answers is declared the winner.

Last year, a new world record was set with students solving 182,455,169 math problems accurately. The overall winner was Tatiana D from Australia. She solved 65,199 math problems correctly in the 48 hours. Runner-up Rock Tsui, a 17-year old from England, chalked 62,273 correct answers to his credit. He said he only slept for half-an-hour throughout the 48 hours, keeping himself awake by drinking a lot of Red Bull for energy and caffene. This was a big win for Rock Tsui, who came in 17th at the 2007 Maths Day challenge.

Even if you do not wish to participate in the March 4th competition, you and your entire class can just have fun practising your math skills between now and March 4th. All you need to do is to ask your parents or teachers to register at http://worldmathsday.com/ and get started. It's fun and free and you may even win one of their special awards, if you do well. Sources: Worldmathsday.com