This book explores the three related themes of mathematics competition, mathematical challenges, and creativity. It begins by discussing international practices and research involving mathematics competitions. Extending beyond the mere emphasis on competition for the highest achieving students, many of the competition-type activities, the problems used for such competitions, and mathematical challenges are translated into mainstream classroom practices. This extends into the second theme of the book, which is mathematical challenges. This book also examines how one of the functions of mathematically challenging tasks could be used to assess mathematical creativity, which then leads into the third theme on creativity. Overall, it examines how mathematics competition and challenges are used beyond the usual setting of talent identification and development in mainstream school classrooms, and how mathematical challenge is connected to mathematical creativity.

Tin Lam TOH is an associate professor of Mathematics & Mathematics Education in the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and currently the head of the Department in the Institute. Professor Toh obtained his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore and is a mathematician by profession. With his job mainly involved in mathematics teacher education, he also conducts mathematics education research and continues to publish on the topics of Mathematics and Mathematics education in international refereed journals and scholarly books.

Peter James TAYLOR is an emeritus professor from the University of Canberrra, Australia, since 2013. Prior to that, he had been an academic in the University of Canberra for almost 41 years. He was an executive director of the Australian Mathematics Trust until 2012. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and published in the field of Mathematics. He also published papers related to mathematics competition and challenges.  

Pi-Jen LIN is currently an emeritus professor at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. She obtained her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education from the University of Minnesota, United States of America (USA). She was a director of the Graduate Institute of Mathematics and Science Education. Professor Lin was part of an international committee of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME29-32) from 2005 to 2009, and has been the convener of the division of mathematics education of the National Science Foundation of Taiwan from 2014 to 2016. She conducted a series of research on mathematics teacher education, which supports teachers in designing creativity-directed tasks and teaching in regular classrooms. She has also published extensively on areas of mathematical creativity and mathematics argumentation in English language journals.