Math Club

Students took the team selection test for MATHCOUNTS today. There are still a few students who were absent, so this list is still tentative. But the following students will probably represent MPA at the chapter competition on February 4th:

If you would enjoy doing some math over the summer, here are some opportunities for you. And most of these are completely free!

Of course you can work through the Competition Math for Middle school book that many of you borrowed from me early in the year. I know most of those are buried on the bottom of your lockers. Dig them out and spend a little time with those problems.

The Art of Problem Solving has several free things you can play with. One of the best is Alcumus, their online learning tool. It will learn from your experience and customize to your performance. This should help you to improve remarkably!

The Art of Problem Solving also has an extensive collection of AMC-8 problems you can work with. Doing well on the AMC-8 should help you with MATHCOUNTS as well.

If you are willing to spend a little of your lunch money, you can try out one of the online classes offered by The Art of Problem Solving. I recommend either the MATHCOUNTS AMC-8 basics or advanced courses.

 

The 7/8 Math Club earned Gold Status in the MATHCOUNTS club program for the 2010-2011 school year. This is the 3rd time in 4 years Math Club has earned Gold Status.

In order to reach Gold Status, at least 12 Math Club members had to complete a series of monthly challenges and then earn 8/10 on the Ultimate Math Challenge. Only two other schools in Minnesota earned Gold Status.

Matt E. placed 5th out of 125 students at the state MATHCOUNTS competition on Saturday, March 26. He was also 3rd in the separate Countdown Round part of the competition. This is our best ever individual finish at the state competition. Congratulations to Matt!

The following students will represent MPA on our MATHCOUNTS team:

Matt E.
Collin H.
Susie K.
Julia W.

The following students will participate as individuals:

Josh S.
Jose D.
Karsten D.
Zoe W.
Kian D.
Sofie N.

The chapter competition is on Saturday, February 5, at 8:00 am at Century College. Please let me know promptly if you are unable to participate so I can arrange for someone to take your place.

The results from the 2010 AMC-8 are in, and some of our students did quite well!

Our school winner, scoring 20/25, was 8th grader Matt E. Our school runner-up, scoring 19/25 was 7th grader, Collin H. Our 3rd best result, scoring 15/25, was from 6th grader Susie K.

Matt and Collin made the national honor roll, with scores putting them in the top 5% of all students taking this very challenging test.

The 2011 MATHCOUNTS competition is coming!

We will do our team selection test on Friday, January 14th during Math Club. All Math Club members are expected to be there and take the test. It's 30 minutes, 15 problems, no calculators. The top four will make up our team and the next six will participate as individuals.

The MATHCOUNTS chapter competition is on Saturday, February 5th, from about 8:00 to about 1:30. A pizza lunch and a snack will be provided. For those who do well, the state competition is Saturday, March 26th, which is the middle weekend of spring break.

Richard Rusczyk, the founder of Art of Problem Solving, gave a talk at the 2009 Math Prize for Girls about the importance of Problem Solving. He spoke about the limits of the typical school math curriculum and typical math textbooks, the perils of perfection, and the importance of presenting students with challenging math problems that cannot be solved with memorized algorithms.

He also mentioned the importance of Math Clubs in giving talented math students the kind of hard math problems that will stretch them, and a place to be with others who share their love of math. My honors math classes often include such hard problems, and the members of our Math Club see many such "interesting" problems.

The video is 60 minutes. You can download the slides for his presentation here.

Matt, Katie, Marisa, and Ryan participated in the Minnesota state MATHCOUNTS competition on Saturday, March 13. The team finished 11th out of 27 teams. Matt finished 7th (the second best finish ever for an MPA student) and qualified to participate in the Countdown Round. Congratulations to all of these students!