Albany Area Math Circle representatives at Math Prize for Girls

Congratulations to the four Albany Area Math Circle students who have qualified for invitations to the Math Prize for Girls to be held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 17. They are all four outstanding representatives of all that is best in our math circle: massive enthusiasm for tackling mathematical challenges and eagerness to share their mathematical knowledge with others in our community.

From left to right above are:

Elizabeth Parizh, a rising junior at Niskayuna High School

Gili Rusak, a rising freshman at Shaker High School

Cecilia Holodak, a rising sophomore at Niskayuna High School.

At lower right is Zhixin (Wanwan) Fei, a rising senior at Emma Willard School.

They are a remarkably talented and experienced group. All four are veterans who also participated in the Math Prize for Girls last year. Elizabeth, Gili, and Cecilia have all participated in MATHCOUNTS, NYSML, ARML, and the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament.



Elizabeth has been student coaching at Iroquois Middle School. She was one of only a few high school students across the country invited to join adult math circle leaders at the annual national meeting of the National Association of Math Circles which took place at the University of Houston this March, where she gave an excellent and very well-received presentation on her experiences both as a student in a math circle and also as a coach of younger students. The audience for her presentation were mostly adult leaders of math circles, many of whom remarked to me afterwards how helpful her perspective was to them. At the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival associated with that meeting, Elizabeth also participated as an apprentice to Bard College Professor Japheth Wood, helping him lead a session on game theory based on the Game of Nim. Elizabeth was an AIME qualifier this year.

Gili was the second highest scoring 8th grader from anywhere in the US or Canada at Math Prize 2010, was among the top 10 in the state at the state MATHCOUNTS championship this year, and was already among our top high school students in 7th and 8th grade on contests such as AIME and HMMT. She plans to student coach younger students next year.

Cecilia also plans to student coach younger students next year. Her many honors include being the first girl in a decade to win the CountDown Round at the Chapter MATHCOUNTS contest and being part of a four person Science Bowl team that placed 7th in the country at the National Science Bowl event in Washington, DC last year.

Wanwan qualified for AIME this year on the AMC12. Last year, she was the highest scorer on the AMC10 of anyone in this area, male or female, and she was also among the five highest scoring girls anywhere in the state on that contest. She is among a group of Emma Willard students who have been discussing launching a math mentoring program for younger girls in the future, an exciting initiative for our area.

Upstate NY ARML team

Congratulations to the Albany Area Math Circle students who represented Upstate New York on the all-star teams at ARML, the national high school math championships held at Penn State this weekend: Matthew Babbitt, Cecilia Holodak, Preston Law, Zubin Mukerjee, Jien Ogawa, Elizabeth Parizh, Paul Rapaport, Schuyler Smith, Felix Sun, and Jay White joined a stellar group of math students from other parts of Upstate New York to do our region proud.

As usual, the problems were extremely challenging--indeed, the veteran members of the problem writing committee cheerfully admit that some of them get zeroes on the contests when taking them for practice as part of the development process!

Special congratulations to Allen Liu, a seventh grader from the Rochester area, who got 9 out of 10 correct on the individual round and ranked 10th in the country after tiebreaks!

Congrats as well to team high scorers Schuyler Smith and Felix Sun, veteran seniors who managed to get 7 out of 10 correct for team high scorer honors.

Congratulations again, Matthew!

Albany Area Math Circle student Matthew Babbitt, a tenth grader from Fort Edward, New York, was among the top 10 American students on the Asia Pacific Math Olympiad (APMO), earning an Honorable Mention and helping the US team take second place among the 34 participating countries.

The other students on the United States APMO team along with Matthew were quite a distinguished group: Xiaoyu He, Wenyu Cao, Evan O'Dorney, Albert Gu, Calvin Deng, David Yang, Benjamin Gunby, and Mitchell Lee. (In fact, all the other APMO top ten students have won the USA Math Olympiad at least once. Several have won it multiple times and have made the International Math Olympiad team, where they have won gold and/or silver medals.)



XXIII Asia Pacific Math Olympiad

2011 Summary of Results
Top 20 countries:

1 KOREA 289
2 USA 269
3 THAILAND 228
4 PERU 223
5 TAIWAN 220
6 JAPAN 208
7 RUSSIA 205
8 SINGAPORE 205
9 BRAZIL 190
10 HONG KONG 173
11 CANADA 164
12 AUSTRALIA 156
13 KAZAKHSTAN 154
14 MEXICO 141
15 INDONESIA 135
16 NEW ZEALAND 128
17 ARGENTINA 121
18 MALAYSIA 108
19 AZERBAIJAN 101
20 TAJIKISTAN 82

Math Circle stalwarts challenge Watson @Jeopardy!

Yesterday, two pillars of the Albany Area Math Circle, advisor Bill Babbitt and veteran student leader Matthew Babbitt, traveled to IBM Watson Research Laboratories along with members of RPI's Human Media Interaction class. As part of their field trip, they got to play as a team head to head against Watson (or perhaps we should say, "two heads to no head" against Watson). The photo above came early in the game. Watson pulled ahead--by a large margin--after this shot was taken.

Congratulations to Professor Rita Biswas!

Earlier today, Albany Area Math Circle advisor Rita Biswas won the John S. Levato Endowment Award for Teaching in recognition of her outstanding teaching at the University at Albany (SUNY) School of Business.

In addition to the great work she does at UAlbany, she has also served as an outstanding advisor to our math circle, most notably in the excellent work she did in organizing arrangements for the University at Albany to host the high school state championship math meet, NYSML, last year. She has also served on the coaching staff of the Upstate New York Math Team, traveling with them to the national math championship meet, ARML, at Penn State on the weekend after Memorial Day. She has also organized weekend expeditions to the Princeton University Math Contest (PUMaC) and the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament as well as helping with proctoring the USA Math Olympiad and supporting our middle school outreach initiatives. Our math circle is very fortunate to have her as an advisor.

Congratulations Schuyler!

Albany Area Math Circle member Schuyler Smith has been named by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as one of the 141 US Presidential Scholars this year. Congratulations as well to Union College Astrophysics Professor Rebecca Koopman, whom Schuyler has nominated for the US Presidential Scholar Teacher Recognition Award. They will be honored in a ceremony in Washington, DC in June.

Schuyler's official US Presidential Scholar biography appears below:

Schuyler has always been curious about the world around him. He grew up in Upstate New York, and feels more at home exploring mountains than navigating cities. Today he's a National AP Scholar, and the state champion and nationally ranked in many math and science competitions. He's completed most of the math and computer science majors at Union College. In 2008 he started an open source project that has been used to teach physics to high school and college students, and currently works as a teaching assistant for Art of Problem Solving. Each week he volunteers to teach math to middle schoolers. Schuyler has observed on the world's largest telescope, and his research papers on galaxy clusters and evolutionary robotics have been published nationally and internationally. In his free time he enjoys tennis, sailing, clarinet, computers, photography, flashlights, and penguins.

ADDENDUM: It is worth noting that Schuyler is only the second student from this part of the state to be honored as a US Presidential Scholar in recent years. The last Presidential Scholar from our region, Beth Schaffer, selected in 2007, was also a member of Albany Area Math Circle throughout her four years at Guilderland High School, and served as our math circle's co-captain during her junior and senior years. Beth was also a mentor and coach to Schuyler's state championship winning homeschool MATHCOUNTS team back when he was an eighth grader. Beth is now a senior at MIT, where she has been a lead organizer of the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament. She has also been a coach for the Upstate New York AllStar Math Team, which will represent Upstate New York at the national high school math tournament at Penn State next month. Schuyler is a senior veteran member of that team.

Math Circle student runs for school board

Math Circle member Rich Reitz is running for a seat on the Niskayuna Board of Education in the upcoming school district election on May 17.

His biography on the school district website illustrates that our math circle students have interests that span many dimensions beyond mathematics:

Richard Reitz is seeking a first term on the Board of Education. Currently a senior at Niskayuna High School and a lifelong district resident, Reitz, who will be graduating in June, has attended Niskayuna schools for the past 13 years.

Reitz plans to attend Schenectady County Community College beginning in the fall. He also plans to cross-register in math courses through Union College. Reitz achieved AP Scholar with Honor status while at the high school. He has received the President’s Volunteer Service Award for community service each of the last four years (2007-2010) and anticipates receiving the award in 2011.

Reitz currently serves as co-president of Nisky S.T.A.R.T. (Students Today are Recycling Together), the recycling club at Niskayuna High School. An accomplished musician, he is also a cellist in the Empire State Youth Orchestra.

Reitz is also active in community clubs and organizations. As of April 15, he has achieved Eagle Scout status. He also participates as a member of Cap City Bang Bang, a local ultimate Frisbee team.

The other two candidates are incumbent board members John Buhrmaster and Deb Oriola. Their biographies are available here.

Interested voters can meet all three candidates tomorrow evening (May 2) at 7 p.m. at the annual "Meet the Candidates Night" at Van Antwerp Middle School Auditorium.

UPDATE 5/18/11: The election had a record turnout of 3,305 voters, the highest total in over a decade. Although Rich did not win a seat on the School Board, over 38% of the voters cast ballots for him.