| Congratulations to all the Albany area students who embraced the "extreme math" challenge of this year's AMC10 and AMC12 contests. Here are the criteria for invitation to the AIME along with the honor lists: American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) qualification: 115.5 or above on AMC10A 120 or above on AMC10B 94.5 or above on AMC12A 99 or above on AMC12B Congratulations and best wishes to the following students from the Albany area who have qualified to take the AIME, the next step in a series of progressively more challenging mathematics exams leading to the International Mathematics Olympiad. American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) AMC12B qualifiers: |
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| Matthew Babbitt (heeg) 117 | ||||
| Wyatt Smith (heeg) 114 | ||||
| Elizabeth Parizh (Niskayuna HS) 99 | ||||
| American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) AMC10B qualifiers: |
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| Alex Wei (Van Antwerp MS) 135 Ziqing Dong (Farnsworth MS) 126 William Wang (Farnsworth MS) 124.5 Aniket Tolpadi (Niskayuna HS) 123 |
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| American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) AMC12A qualifiers: |
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| Matthew Babbitt (heeg) 130.5 Zubin Mukerjee (Guilderland HS) 102 Sherry He (Emma Willard School) 101 Cecilia Holodak (Niskayuna HS) 99 Wyatt Smith (heeg) 99 J Chung (Emma Willard School) 95 N Xie (Albany Academies) 95 | ||||
| American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) AMC10A qualifiers Alex Wei (Van Antwerp MS) 127.5 Philip Sun (Shenendahoah HS East) 126 William Wang (Farnsworth MS) 123 Patrick Chi (Iroquois MS) 120 Vineet Velandula (Niskayuna HS) 120 Ziqing Dong (Farnsworth MS) 117 Gili Rusak (Shaker HS) 117 |
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| Students with light blue backgrounds behind their names are members of Albany Area Math Circle and/or our affiliated middle school outreach programs. (If you know any of the others--or any other local students who might enjoy our math circle activities, please invite them to subscribe to our email lists by sending an email to AlbanyAreaMathCircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com for high school students and their parents or middleschoolmathcircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com for parents of middle school students.) Please report any errors or omissions by sending email to mathcircle at gmail. | ||||
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Congratulations to our American Invitational Math Exam qualifiers
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Winter holiday mathematics
Albany Area Math Circle is taking a brief break from our regular Friday evening meetings, but that doesn't mean we aren't surrounded by wonderful mathematics, so here are some treasures to share with your friends and family members. I would love to hear from other math circle members about interesting mathematical aspects of their cultures. I am sure there are many that I do not know about.
Last night was the last of the eight nights of Hanukkah. There is all sorts of fun math in Hanukkah, such as figuring out how many candles you need in a box to cover all eight nights of Hanukkah, which will be one less than a triangular number. There are many fun combinatorics problems to construct and explore as well. How many different color combinations can be constructed if you have n different colors of candles available?
Today's Albany Times Union had a great mathematics of Hanukkah story, A one-in-trillions dreidel game, about a remarkable string of luck by a first-time dreidel player, who managed to spin the four-sided top 68 consecutive times without ever seeing the losing side come up and winning the entire pot 56 of those spins. This inspired his great-nephew, a Princeton sophomore studying operations research and financial engineering, to pull out his calculator to compute the astronomically large odds against such a long streak of good luck.
There are several ways to model this probability calculation and it would be interesting to discuss the pros and cons of each approach. One simple possibility is to compute the likelihood of never losing in 68 spins, which would be 1 - (3/4)68, which works out to 1 in 22.5 trillion. You can make the odds even more astronomical if you also consider the likelihood that he actually wins the pot on 56 of those 68 non-losing spins, because the remaining three sides are equally likely to come up, and only one of those spins yields the entire pot to the spinner.
Of course, this kind of analysis gives rise to interesting philosophical discussions of the sort that physicist Richard Feynman raised in his book, The Meaning of It All: Reflections of a Citizen Scientist, when he talked about the probability of seeing a particular license plate in a parking lot as well as the work of Stanford mathematician Persi Diaconis on the mathematics of coincidences.
Moving onto Christmas, we are currently in the midst of the fabled "Twelve Days of Christmas," as memorialized in the song that starts with one gift given on the first day (December 25, "a partridge in a pear tree"), three gifts given on the second day (December 26, "two turtle doves" plus another "partridge in a pear tree"), and so on through the twelfth day (January 6, which happens to be our next math circle meeting date!)
John Cook at the Endeavor blog has a great post on the mathematics of the Twelve Days of Christmas. He observes that the total number of gifts received each day is a triangular number and also notes that the cumulative number of gifts received through the end of each day is a tetrahedral number. He has written up several nice proofs demonstrating that this is true in general, and he also includes a wonderful link and illustration from the Math is Fun blog.
The Math is Fun blog's illustration at right is a great way to illustrate the triangular/tetrahedral nature of the 12 Days of Christmas song for your younger friends and relatives. The image shows the situation for the first five days of Christmas, with the top layer representing the number of presents given on the first day (1), the next layer representing the number of presents given on the second day (3), the next layer the presents given on the third day (6), the next layer the presents given on the fourth day (10), the next layer the presents given on the fifth day (15). The cumulative number of presents given on the first through fifth day is the number in the entire five layer tetrahedron, or 1+3+6+10+15 = 35. You can extend this indefinitely, of course. If you stop after 12 days, you will have a 12-layer tetrahedron with a cumulative total of 1+3+6+10+15+21+28+36+45+55+66+78 presents, which turns out to be 364, a very nice number, since it is one less than the number of days in a typical year!
Another fun fact to share with your younger friends and relatives: take the number of cumulative gifts received during the 12 days and multiply it by the number of days in 2012 and you get a nice opportunity to discuss factoring differences of squares since 3652 - 12 = (365-1)(365+1).
There are wonderful mathematical possibilities to explore in every religion and culture--including the modular arithmetic of the various calendar systems generally designed to reconcile discrepancies between lunar and solar numbering systems, which move many holiday observations around relative to one another. It's also interesting to note the frequency with which calendars in so many widely divergent calendars use a 7-day week. This is mathematically very convenient, since the number nearest to 365.24 with a conveniently large number of factors is 364, which is divisible by 7.
The Hebrew calendar has a 19-year cycle with a leap month in seven of those years. The Islamic calendar has a 30-year cycle with a leap day added to the final month in 11 out of those 30 years. The Gregorian calendar commonly used in the west appears to have a four year cycle with a leap day every four years, but it's actually more complicated than that.
New years festivals are observed at many different times in different calendars, starting with the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, which arrives in early fall. The Hindu new year celebration happens on their festival of lights, Divali, in mid-fall. The Chinese New Year generally comes later in winter than the Gregorian new year on January 1. The early Roman calendar (before Caesar came along and reformed it) began its new year in March, had only ten lunar months, and then had a mysterious unlabeled winter period of 61 day that were apparently not considered to belong to any month. Caesar changed the New Year to January 1, but subsequently, Christian rulers moved the New Year to March, before Pope Gregory moved it back to January. The Islamic calendar is a mathematically interesting exception to the general rule that most calendars observe New Year's in the interval between the fall equinox and the spring equinox. The new year in the Islamic calendar rotates through all the seasons over time, so in 2025, the Islamic new year will start in late June very close to the summer solstice. The Islamic calendar advances about 11 days each year, the Islamic new year will fall near the winter solstice about 16 or 17 years later and then will fall near the summer solstice again in 2058.
Last night was the last of the eight nights of Hanukkah. There is all sorts of fun math in Hanukkah, such as figuring out how many candles you need in a box to cover all eight nights of Hanukkah, which will be one less than a triangular number. There are many fun combinatorics problems to construct and explore as well. How many different color combinations can be constructed if you have n different colors of candles available?
Today's Albany Times Union had a great mathematics of Hanukkah story, A one-in-trillions dreidel game, about a remarkable string of luck by a first-time dreidel player, who managed to spin the four-sided top 68 consecutive times without ever seeing the losing side come up and winning the entire pot 56 of those spins. This inspired his great-nephew, a Princeton sophomore studying operations research and financial engineering, to pull out his calculator to compute the astronomically large odds against such a long streak of good luck.
There are several ways to model this probability calculation and it would be interesting to discuss the pros and cons of each approach. One simple possibility is to compute the likelihood of never losing in 68 spins, which would be 1 - (3/4)68, which works out to 1 in 22.5 trillion. You can make the odds even more astronomical if you also consider the likelihood that he actually wins the pot on 56 of those 68 non-losing spins, because the remaining three sides are equally likely to come up, and only one of those spins yields the entire pot to the spinner.
Of course, this kind of analysis gives rise to interesting philosophical discussions of the sort that physicist Richard Feynman raised in his book, The Meaning of It All: Reflections of a Citizen Scientist, when he talked about the probability of seeing a particular license plate in a parking lot as well as the work of Stanford mathematician Persi Diaconis on the mathematics of coincidences.
Moving onto Christmas, we are currently in the midst of the fabled "Twelve Days of Christmas," as memorialized in the song that starts with one gift given on the first day (December 25, "a partridge in a pear tree"), three gifts given on the second day (December 26, "two turtle doves" plus another "partridge in a pear tree"), and so on through the twelfth day (January 6, which happens to be our next math circle meeting date!)
John Cook at the Endeavor blog has a great post on the mathematics of the Twelve Days of Christmas. He observes that the total number of gifts received each day is a triangular number and also notes that the cumulative number of gifts received through the end of each day is a tetrahedral number. He has written up several nice proofs demonstrating that this is true in general, and he also includes a wonderful link and illustration from the Math is Fun blog.
The Math is Fun blog's illustration at right is a great way to illustrate the triangular/tetrahedral nature of the 12 Days of Christmas song for your younger friends and relatives. The image shows the situation for the first five days of Christmas, with the top layer representing the number of presents given on the first day (1), the next layer representing the number of presents given on the second day (3), the next layer the presents given on the third day (6), the next layer the presents given on the fourth day (10), the next layer the presents given on the fifth day (15). The cumulative number of presents given on the first through fifth day is the number in the entire five layer tetrahedron, or 1+3+6+10+15 = 35. You can extend this indefinitely, of course. If you stop after 12 days, you will have a 12-layer tetrahedron with a cumulative total of 1+3+6+10+15+21+28+36+45+55+66+78 presents, which turns out to be 364, a very nice number, since it is one less than the number of days in a typical year! Another fun fact to share with your younger friends and relatives: take the number of cumulative gifts received during the 12 days and multiply it by the number of days in 2012 and you get a nice opportunity to discuss factoring differences of squares since 3652 - 12 = (365-1)(365+1).
There are wonderful mathematical possibilities to explore in every religion and culture--including the modular arithmetic of the various calendar systems generally designed to reconcile discrepancies between lunar and solar numbering systems, which move many holiday observations around relative to one another. It's also interesting to note the frequency with which calendars in so many widely divergent calendars use a 7-day week. This is mathematically very convenient, since the number nearest to 365.24 with a conveniently large number of factors is 364, which is divisible by 7.
The Hebrew calendar has a 19-year cycle with a leap month in seven of those years. The Islamic calendar has a 30-year cycle with a leap day added to the final month in 11 out of those 30 years. The Gregorian calendar commonly used in the west appears to have a four year cycle with a leap day every four years, but it's actually more complicated than that.
New years festivals are observed at many different times in different calendars, starting with the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, which arrives in early fall. The Hindu new year celebration happens on their festival of lights, Divali, in mid-fall. The Chinese New Year generally comes later in winter than the Gregorian new year on January 1. The early Roman calendar (before Caesar came along and reformed it) began its new year in March, had only ten lunar months, and then had a mysterious unlabeled winter period of 61 day that were apparently not considered to belong to any month. Caesar changed the New Year to January 1, but subsequently, Christian rulers moved the New Year to March, before Pope Gregory moved it back to January. The Islamic calendar is a mathematically interesting exception to the general rule that most calendars observe New Year's in the interval between the fall equinox and the spring equinox. The new year in the Islamic calendar rotates through all the seasons over time, so in 2025, the Islamic new year will start in late June very close to the summer solstice. The Islamic calendar advances about 11 days each year, the Islamic new year will fall near the winter solstice about 16 or 17 years later and then will fall near the summer solstice again in 2058.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
AMC8 honors
Congratulations to the following students from Albany area schools who achieved national recognition on the very challenging AMC8 contest given last month. Congratulations as well to all the math circle student coaches who have supported and encouraged the students, particularly Zubin Mukerjee, whose satellite middle school math circle had many high scorers again this year.
William Wang, eighth grader at Farnsworth Middle School, was one of four students in the state to manage a rare perfect score. In many years, there are no perfect scores in the entire state of New York. William joins a long list of AAMC students with high scorer in the state plaques on the AMC8, starting with Raju Krishnamoorthy (1998), Drew Besse (2001), Dave Bieber (2004), Andrew Ardito (2004, 2005), Schuyler Smith (2006), Matt Babbitt (2007), and Ziqing (Bill) Dong (2010).
Joining William on the Distinguished Honor Roll are Bill Dong (Farnsworth, 23 points), Alex Wei (Van Antwerp/Niskayuna CSD, 23 points), and Eric Pasquini (Farnsworth, 22 points.)
William, Bill, and Eric had a school team score of 70 points, which ranked Farnsworth third place in the state and earned the school national school honor roll standing. Jeremy Collison from Farnsworth also achieved national Honor Roll recognition with a score of 18 points.
Niskayuna middle school students from Iroquois and Van Antwerp joined forces to rack up a team score of 65 points, ranking 7th place team in the state and earning a spot on the national school Merit Roll list. In addition to Alex Wei, other Niskayuna CSD students earning national Honor Roll status were: Patrick Chi and Liam McGrinder with 21 points, Andrey Ahkmetov, Gideon Schmidt, and Jason Tang with 20 points each, Matthew (Rocket) Ruona with 19 points, Alice Hollocher, Darius Irani, and Vladimir Malcevic with 18 points.
Other teams that made the national Merit Roll list included Bethlehem Middle School with a team score that ranked top 30 in the state. Four of their students also earned individual Honor Roll standing as well: Wenyuan Hou (21 points) Eliot Shekhtman and Iris Zhou (18 points), and Bowen Chen (17 points).
Alex Cao (21 points) and Jeff Shen (19 points), both from Shaker Junior HS and competing on the Albany Area Math Circle team, earned individual national Honor Roll Recognition. Along with the score contributed by tying school bronze winners Gwenda Law (O'Rourke) and Helen Yuan (Shaker), the Albany Area Math Circle team landed on the school Merit Roll as well.
Albany Academies also landed on the national school Merit Roll with a team score of 51 points. Zoe Shannon (18 points) and Joseph Aiello (17 points) earned individual Honor Roll recognition as well.
The following students in sixth grade or below received individual recognition for their scores on the Achievement Roll: Bethlehem MS: Michael Klisiwecz, Isabella Ruud, and Eliot Shekhtman; HACD: Max Benson; Niskayuna CSD: Gregory George and Gabriel Kammer.
All national honor lists are available at this link.
William Wang, eighth grader at Farnsworth Middle School, was one of four students in the state to manage a rare perfect score. In many years, there are no perfect scores in the entire state of New York. William joins a long list of AAMC students with high scorer in the state plaques on the AMC8, starting with Raju Krishnamoorthy (1998), Drew Besse (2001), Dave Bieber (2004), Andrew Ardito (2004, 2005), Schuyler Smith (2006), Matt Babbitt (2007), and Ziqing (Bill) Dong (2010).
Joining William on the Distinguished Honor Roll are Bill Dong (Farnsworth, 23 points), Alex Wei (Van Antwerp/Niskayuna CSD, 23 points), and Eric Pasquini (Farnsworth, 22 points.)
William, Bill, and Eric had a school team score of 70 points, which ranked Farnsworth third place in the state and earned the school national school honor roll standing. Jeremy Collison from Farnsworth also achieved national Honor Roll recognition with a score of 18 points.
Niskayuna middle school students from Iroquois and Van Antwerp joined forces to rack up a team score of 65 points, ranking 7th place team in the state and earning a spot on the national school Merit Roll list. In addition to Alex Wei, other Niskayuna CSD students earning national Honor Roll status were: Patrick Chi and Liam McGrinder with 21 points, Andrey Ahkmetov, Gideon Schmidt, and Jason Tang with 20 points each, Matthew (Rocket) Ruona with 19 points, Alice Hollocher, Darius Irani, and Vladimir Malcevic with 18 points.
Other teams that made the national Merit Roll list included Bethlehem Middle School with a team score that ranked top 30 in the state. Four of their students also earned individual Honor Roll standing as well: Wenyuan Hou (21 points) Eliot Shekhtman and Iris Zhou (18 points), and Bowen Chen (17 points).
Alex Cao (21 points) and Jeff Shen (19 points), both from Shaker Junior HS and competing on the Albany Area Math Circle team, earned individual national Honor Roll Recognition. Along with the score contributed by tying school bronze winners Gwenda Law (O'Rourke) and Helen Yuan (Shaker), the Albany Area Math Circle team landed on the school Merit Roll as well.
Albany Academies also landed on the national school Merit Roll with a team score of 51 points. Zoe Shannon (18 points) and Joseph Aiello (17 points) earned individual Honor Roll recognition as well.
The following students in sixth grade or below received individual recognition for their scores on the Achievement Roll: Bethlehem MS: Michael Klisiwecz, Isabella Ruud, and Eliot Shekhtman; HACD: Max Benson; Niskayuna CSD: Gregory George and Gabriel Kammer.
All national honor lists are available at this link.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sign up for our December Math Meet
Albany Area Math Circle continues our very well-received monthly middle school math meets program again this year. We will be using the Math Meets contest problems written by the always awesome George Reuter, the world famous coach of the Upstate NY Math team.
Congratulations to all the brave students who participated in our October and November math meets! Every question solved added to the team's totals due to the fact that we had less than 10 students in each division!
Shout-outs to our high scorers of the meets: Gwenda and Gabriel (Nov-middle school division); Jeffrrey (Oct-middle school division); Matt B, Matt G, David, and Philip (Nov-hs-no calc division); David, Gideon, and Luxi (Nov-hs calculator division); Alex and Alice (Oct hs-no calc division), Cecilia, Gili, and Matt B (Oct hs calc division).
Congratulations as well to the following perfect scorers: Gili, Matt B, and Zubin (Oct hs-no calc); Matt B, Philip, and Zubin (Nov hs calc); Jerry and Patrick (Oct ms.) (Note: due to a no-duplicate award tradition, perfect scorers are NOT elgible for high scorer of the meet recognition.)
Thanks to all our high school students who have participated as mentors--you DO make a difference in helping "scary math problems" look less scary to the next generation of problem solvers! And your courageous example in tackling tough problems of your own alongside our middle schoolers is inspiring also!
The biggest value of this type of activity comes from the collaborative discussions and reflections afterwards. You can find last year's problems (and solutions!) here. The December math meets problems focus on geometry, so I recommend looking at last year's December math meet problems to prepare for this month's meet.
There are also playbooks with tips and even videos made by Coach Reuter to explain the solutions to last year's problems available here.
Space is limited and advanced signup on the form below is required.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Congratulations to Ms. Schmidt!
Albany Area Math Circle is beaming with pride to announce that our co-advisor, Alexandra Schmidt, has been recognized as a National Board Certified Teacher.
Alexandra, who teaches at Hebrew Academy of the Capital District, is one of only 50 middle school math teachers in New York to achieve this rigorous professional recognition. She has also been a major contributor to the success of our middle school math outreach program, as well as a supporter and facilitator of many opportunities for our high school students. She was our lead proctor when Albany Area Math Circle hosted the statewide high school math tournament, NYSML, in 2010.
Although her school is a small one, I do not know of any other school in the Capital District that includes more students as fully in their MATHCOUNTS program as Alexandra's MATHCOUNTS program does. She shares my philosophy that the excitement, deep challenges, and collaborative shared Aha! moments of those problems ought to reach as many students as possible, not just a handful of the "top n" students eligible for official competition. I wish all students in the country had teachers as willing to share such engaging challenges with their students.
All students involved in her MATHCOUNTS program (not just the students on the official competition team) get invited to her home for ice cream sundaes with her special homemade fudge to celebrate afterwards. That reflects a belief--which I share as well--that every member of the greater MATHCOUNTS community has a role to play in encouraging and supporting the mathematical and problem solving development of other members of the community.
A graduate of Stanford University, with training and experience as an engineer before she decided to teach mathematics, Alexandra brings a strong awareness of the role that mathematical problem solving and teamwork play in the "real world" to her classroom. She also embodies all that is best about the spirit of generosity of math coaches, helping students everywhere, not just students in her own school. (For more on this spirit, see here and here.) She has also composed her own original problems and contributed them to the greater national problem solving community. MATHCOUNTS chose to highlight those problems as the "Coaches' Problems of the Month" in January 2010. You can find her problems and annotated solutions here. (MATHCOUNTS is happy to accept original problems from students as well as coaches--if you have problems to contribute, check out this link.)
Update: As of September 2014, Alexandra is now a math teacher at Emma Willard School in Troy, bring the positive energy of collaborative "extreme math" to the high school level.
Alexandra, who teaches at Hebrew Academy of the Capital District, is one of only 50 middle school math teachers in New York to achieve this rigorous professional recognition. She has also been a major contributor to the success of our middle school math outreach program, as well as a supporter and facilitator of many opportunities for our high school students. She was our lead proctor when Albany Area Math Circle hosted the statewide high school math tournament, NYSML, in 2010.
 |
| Alexandra Schmidt, NBCT, in her classroom--with her Tough Traveler Albany Area Math Circle advisor bag! |
Although her school is a small one, I do not know of any other school in the Capital District that includes more students as fully in their MATHCOUNTS program as Alexandra's MATHCOUNTS program does. She shares my philosophy that the excitement, deep challenges, and collaborative shared Aha! moments of those problems ought to reach as many students as possible, not just a handful of the "top n" students eligible for official competition. I wish all students in the country had teachers as willing to share such engaging challenges with their students.
All students involved in her MATHCOUNTS program (not just the students on the official competition team) get invited to her home for ice cream sundaes with her special homemade fudge to celebrate afterwards. That reflects a belief--which I share as well--that every member of the greater MATHCOUNTS community has a role to play in encouraging and supporting the mathematical and problem solving development of other members of the community.
A graduate of Stanford University, with training and experience as an engineer before she decided to teach mathematics, Alexandra brings a strong awareness of the role that mathematical problem solving and teamwork play in the "real world" to her classroom. She also embodies all that is best about the spirit of generosity of math coaches, helping students everywhere, not just students in her own school. (For more on this spirit, see here and here.) She has also composed her own original problems and contributed them to the greater national problem solving community. MATHCOUNTS chose to highlight those problems as the "Coaches' Problems of the Month" in January 2010. You can find her problems and annotated solutions here. (MATHCOUNTS is happy to accept original problems from students as well as coaches--if you have problems to contribute, check out this link.)
Update: As of September 2014, Alexandra is now a math teacher at Emma Willard School in Troy, bring the positive energy of collaborative "extreme math" to the high school level.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
"There are no foolish questions and ...
Hat tip to the always awesome Pat Ballew for reminding me of this wonderful quote from Charles Steinmetz, the mathematical and electrical "Wizard of Schenectady."
Our PUMaC team "Albany Area Math Circle Steinmetz" fittingly bears his name.
Charles Steinmetz founded the GE research labs (originally in a stable behind his home in the Stockade neighborhood of Schenectady) and also founded the electrical engineering department at Union College, where taught for many years. He also served as President of the Schenectady City School Board (campaigning with a motto of "a seat for every bottom" at a time when the schools were bursting at the seams, requiring double shifts) as well as President of the Schenectady City Council.
His story is a fascinating one--this Smithsonian blog post is a great source. An excerpt:
a brilliant student of mathematics and chemistry at the University of Breslau, but he was forced to flee the country after the authorities became interested in his involvement with the Socialist Party. He arrived at Ellis Island in 1888 and was nearly turned away because he was a dwarf, but an American friend whom Steinmetz was traveling with convinced immigration officials that the young German Ph.D. was a genius whose presence would someday benefit all of America. In just a few years, Steinmetz would prove his American friend right.Read the Smithsonian article for some of the many great Steinmetz stories. I especially liked the anecdote about the time he went off to trouble-shoot an electrical generator at the nascent Ford Motor Company, and asked for "only a notebook, pencil, and a cot" and then proceeded to spend two straight days "scribbling computations on a notepad" before figuring out a simple solution to Ford's problem. You can also read more about Steinmetz on our blog here.
A willingness to be like Steinmetz--to persevere and think very hard, to try outlandish ideas, to make mistakes, and--above all--to ask questions is the key way that new students can contribute to our math circle. Please be brave about asking questions.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
PUMaC team
I am pleased to announce the eight outstanding students who will represent Albany Area Math Circle at the Princeton University Math Contest (PUMaC) this year:
Matthew Babbitt, heeg
Zubin Mukerjee, Guilderland High School
Wanwan Fei, Emma Willard School
Matt Gu, Guilderland High School
Cecilia Holodak, Niskayuna High School
Preston Law, heeg
Gili Rusak, Shaker High School
Aniket Tolpadi, Niskayuna High School
PUMaC is the most challenging team math competition in which our math circle participates, especially since we compete in the A division, against powerhouse teams from all over the country as well as international teams. We are glad to have a terrific team of very energetic, experienced, and enthusiastic students. Collectively, they have a great deal of experience in other challenging math competitions, including AIME, ARML, HMMT, and Math Prize for Girls.
For past PUMaC adventures see these past blog posts:
Albany Area Math Circle at 2010 PUMaC
Albany Area Math Circle at 2009 PUMaC
Albany Area Math Circle at 2008 PUMaC
The official name of our A-division PUMaC team is Albany Area Math Circle-Steinmetz, in honor of Charles Proteus Steinmetz. You can read more about him in my next post.
Matthew Babbitt, heeg
Zubin Mukerjee, Guilderland High School
Wanwan Fei, Emma Willard School
Matt Gu, Guilderland High School
Cecilia Holodak, Niskayuna High School
Preston Law, heeg
Gili Rusak, Shaker High School
Aniket Tolpadi, Niskayuna High School
PUMaC is the most challenging team math competition in which our math circle participates, especially since we compete in the A division, against powerhouse teams from all over the country as well as international teams. We are glad to have a terrific team of very energetic, experienced, and enthusiastic students. Collectively, they have a great deal of experience in other challenging math competitions, including AIME, ARML, HMMT, and Math Prize for Girls.
For past PUMaC adventures see these past blog posts:
Albany Area Math Circle at 2010 PUMaC
Albany Area Math Circle at 2009 PUMaC
Albany Area Math Circle at 2008 PUMaC
The official name of our A-division PUMaC team is Albany Area Math Circle-Steinmetz, in honor of Charles Proteus Steinmetz. You can read more about him in my next post.
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