Tristan Pang, aged 12, who recently attained 91% in the Cambridge A Level exam, is a boy who aspires to make a difference in the world.
He has already achieved a great deal which seems only to spur him on to greater heights.
Aside from his outstanding academic achievements, Tristan first drew public attention when he won two awards at the NIWA Science and Technology Fair last year. This led to him being invited to present his life story at the inaugural Youth TEDx event held at the Auckland Museum. At twelve years old, Tristan was the youngest presenter. His talk entitled “Quest is fun, be nosey:” can be viewed here.
From there Tristan developed an affinity with Radio Live Sunday Business presenter, Andrew Patterson, who was the MC at the TEDx event and mentor and speech coach for Tristan.
Mr Patterson’s hard-working attitude and interest in helping raise education standards acted as a catalyst for Tristan, who accompanied him to a Decile One school in Auckland. Here Tristan inspired fellow primary school children at a careers day by talking about his own aspirations.
In response to a request from the students at the school to help them with their maths, Tristan embarked on a project to build a website entitled Tristan’s Learning Hub. Here in his own words, he intends to “present maths concepts in video format (similar to the Khan Academy) strand by strand without labelling the year levels in order to remove the psychological barrier in the learners”.
Tristan works on this in his spare time and hopes to have thirty episodes ready to upload sometime in March. This is all while attending weekly mathematics lectures at the University of Auckland and discharging his duties as Head Boy at Ficino School.