Choate’s Math Team attended the MMATHS competition at Yale University and left with awards.
While the rest of the Choate community was busy sleeping through their Saturday mornings on April 2, six students boarded a bus to the third annual Math Majors of America Tournament for High Schools (MMATHS), held at Yale University. After more than three hours of competition, these six students headed homwards, this time with one team award and two individual awards.
The recent performance by Choate’s Math Team is representative of the team’s strong abilities. Co-captain Alex Zheng ’16 said, “The math team is exceptionally strong this year. Last term, we also set a new school record for our performance at the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament.”
Perhaps this success can partially be accredited to the raw passion of participants. According to Math Team member Tony Hao ’19, “I love the ‘aha’ moments in math. When as a team, we successfully tackle a problem which we originally had no clue about — I think that is the best part.”
MMATHS featured three rounds of intense examination, as well as plenty of time for pizza and mingling in between. The three rounds are, in chronological order, the Individual Round, the Mixer Round, and the Mathathon Round.
As the name implies, the Individual Round entails students working alone to solve 12 questions in 75 minutes. Kanon Kihara ’17 enjoyed this round the most. “It was the least stressful. Even if I get everything wrong in that round, it doesn’t affect the team,” she said.
Top scorers from the initial Individual Round were invited to participate in Individual Tiebreakers, in which they had to solve a series of proof-based problems. Hao and co-captain Jacob Klegar ’16 snagged sixth place and third place, respectively.
The following Mixer Round was a rather unique element of MMATHS, as it allowed peers from different teams to work with each other. Students formed groups of five students whom they had never met before. Math Team Co-coach Ms. Kolina Koleva commented, “It gave them a chance to meet other math lovers and make connections and contacts.”
Finally, the Mathathon Round, perhaps the most intense round, required school teams to answer questions in groups of three, sending a designated “runner” to submit each set of answers and retrieve the new set of questions.
Choate did exceptionally well in the Mathathon, missing only one question to clinch first place. Klegar said, “Choate did better than I expected in the Mathathon. We even finished the contest with ten minutes left. And this was against some of the strongest teams in the area, ones that have beaten us at previous contests.”
Members relished the excitement of the Mathathon Round. Scores were updated live and projected onto a screen to inform teams of their rankings.
Hao commented, “The result is very good, but the feeling during the match was even better than the moment when we got the trophy. We finished a set of problems. We submitted it. We saw our score climb gradually — from unranked to top twenty, top five, and eventually first place.” He elaborated, “When you see that, you know that you are a contributor, and the large number of pixels representing your score bar was the result of the power from your brain and your hand.”
Students who attended MMATHS not only solved math problems, but also listened to a lecture by Dr. Daniel Spielman, the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Applied Mathematics at Yale. Dr. Spielman discussed the basics of graphs and networks, as well as his work with algorithms. The goal of his lecture was to introduce high school students to some of the practical and fascinating applications of research in mathematics.
In its third year, MMATHS is coordinated by volunteers throughout the East Coast and sponsored by well-known math organizations such as Art of Problem Solving and Mu Alpha Theta.
MMATHS consists of three parallel competitions being held simultaneously at Yale, Columbia University, and the University of Florida. Thus, in a few weeks, the Choate team can look forward to knowing their rankings nationwide.
MMATHS provided Choate math enthusiasts a fantastic opportunity to both demonstrate their problem solving skills and also interact with the math community beyond Choate. As Math Team member Andy Si ’18 said, “The competition was an amazing experience. It was a privilege to connect with people who think in extraordinary ways.”
