High School and Middle School Math Students Excel in Competition

Scarsdale and Edgemont Math Students Tie for First Place in County League:
Three Scarsdale students and one from Edgemont tied for first place in the Westchester-Putnam Counties math competitionon Monday March 14. Alan Chung, Dexin Li, and Richard Xu of Scarsdale and Victor Lue of Edgemont won in a four-way tie for the individual title as Westchester-Putnam Mathlete of the Year. In the team results there was also a first ever tie: Edgemont and Scarsdale.

The league is the Westchester-Putnam Interscholastic Math League and there are six meets per year. The sixth and final meet took place at White Plains High School on Monday, March 14. 23 schools, 92 teams and 574 individuals participated this academic year. A team consists of 5 students, so schools may have more than one team.

At the final meet, the teams from all the schools gather together at White Plains High School. For the first five meets, the schools are broken down into smaller local groups. For example, Scarsdale, Edgemont, White Plains, Woodlands and Rye form one group. The meeting place alternates among the schools. Following the meet, individual and team scores are sent to the league head, Lester Roby, who tabulates the standings.

The top students from this league are invited to the New York State Math League competition to be held Saturday, April 9 at Penfield High School in Penfield, NY, a suburb of Rochester.

What does it take to be a math champion? We asked tenth grader Richard Xu a few questions and here is what he shared. "I've been quick in arithmetics since kindergarten, being able to solve simple logical puzzles and do simple additions and multiplications, but I really started learning more mathematics during third grade. I develop my aptitude for math through learning more materials related to it, and over time my knowledge of the subject increases. I prepare for competitions by doing extra problems, and learning how others approach the problems if I cannot solve them. The area of mathematics that interests me the most is combinatorics: graph theory, combinations, counting, probability, etc. I still haven't decided what I want to become for the future, but I hope I'll create something that can benefit our society. I might major in mathematics, or computer science; both fields interest me."

Dexin Li said, "I never thought and I still don't think that I have a talent for mathematics. I still remember in 5th grade I was still adding fractions by adding the numerators and then adding the denominators. Since then, I've just been putting more time into mathematics than my classmates did so I improved faster, which makes it seem like I have a natural aptitude for math.

I usually prepare for math competitions by going over the past tests for that competition. I would do one past test around once a week, go over the answers, and write my score in a notebook so that I could track my progress.

Throughout my years of doing math, I have realized how different competition math is from real math. I've also realized that I don't want to major in pure math in the future. However, I do agree that math is extremely important in almost any major (except the arts like English and History, of course). I find that applied math is more appealing to me, but anything more detailed than that I don't know yet.

I'm in 11th grade. My aspiration for the (far) future is to do something that would benefit our society, which goes back to why applied math is more appealing to me. Pure math is much harder to work on, so I think a lot of passion is needed in order to go down that path."

The Scarsdale team is coached by Laura Estersohn and Edgemont by Rachel Golub. About the students, Esterohn says, "They are a group of students who enjoy problem solving and have a good time being together as a team. The questions they solve reward clever thinking as much as straight-ahead math knowledge." See two sample problems and solutions here.

SMS Mathcounts Stand Out in State Competition

SMS students also performed well at the NYS competition. Math teachers Steven Weise reports that after taking first place in the Westchester/Putnam Mathcounts competition, the Scarsdale Middle School Mathcounts team went to the NY State competition. The team finished in 3rd place. Two Scarsdale students, Eric Wei (number 1 overall) and Deyuan Li (number 4 overall) qualified for the 4-person national team that will represent New York State in the national competition in May. Eric has made the national team 3 years in a row, a tremendous accomplishment.

Here is another sample problem from the high school competition: