Math Team Competes in Mind-Boggling Challenges
The math team placed 16th in its first competition at Stuyvesant High School. Photo Credit: Hongbin Pan
By HONGBIN PAN and TRACY SHI
Midwood’s math team attended its first competition this year on Saturday, November 7, at Stuyvesant High School. The competition lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and in the end, the team placed 16th out of 34.
“We placed better than expected,” said Rafaele DiMaggio ’21, a co-captain of the team. “We were surprised by how good we did because we haven’t practiced as much as other teams.”
While many other high school math teams required tryouts and had mandatory practice days every week, Midwood’s math team was just a club that any student could join at any time.
“My expectations were just for the students to enjoy doing math in a competitive setting and to have fun with it,” said Mr. Albert Peterson, the team’s head coach. “The score for me doesn’t matter; it’s more about engaging with the mathematics and with other like-minded students.”
The competition itself consisted of four different rounds: two team rounds, an individual round, and then a marathon round.
In the team round, separate teams of students went into rooms and worked together to complete a series of ten questions.
“We divided the questions amongst the six of us on the team and we worked in groups of two,” said Abrar Navel ’21, one of the students who competed.
After that, the students had to do a proof on a mathematical concept. Once the team rounds were completed, the teams gathered to have lunch and socialize.
“The students got to meet teams from other schools and interact with other students,” said Mr. Peterson.
After lunch came the individual round where each student answered questions on their own. The last round was a marathon round where students answered questions as fast as possible, brought back the answer, and got a new question. There were 25-30 questions in the marathon round. Finally, after all the rounds finished, there was an award ceremony where the school’s placings were announced and awards were handed out.
“All in all, it was a long day, but it was full of math and a lot of fun,” said Mr. Peterson.
These competitions are highly competitive and challenging. The best teams in NYC have to practice rigorously for many hours each week to understand high-level math concepts all the way up to calculus.
“The competition was a great experience though the questions were more difficult than I was prepared for,” said Navel.
Mr. Peterson is proud of his group of students and has high hopes for the math team in the future.
“What I would eventually like to do is turn this into a team that meets every day, but because of Midwood’s scheduling, it’s hard for upper-class students and under-class students to have a meeting at the same time,” said Mr. Peterson.
The team has been around for six years, Mr. Peterson explained. “At first it was created by Ms. Mennard as a club,” he said, “and over the years, we began to participate in events and competitions.”
Hassan Rizwan ’21, another student on the math team, said, “During each practice, we do practice problems for about 45 minutes. We get around ten questions from previous competitions and we see how many we can solve. Then Mr. Peterson goes over the answers.”
According to Jason Mai ’20, “It is mainly algebra and geometry, but what we focus on is how to think outside of the box to solve problems. The problems test our IQ and we learn how to use shortcuts to solve them.”
Sometimes Mr. Peterson displays a video with a practice problem on the Smartboard and asks the students to solve it. After the problem is tried by the students, the team reveals the answer in the video and then discusses the problem and questions are proposed.
“We discover and discuss different math tools and which is the best tool to use in different situations,” said Mr. Peterson.
“It’s just brain-teasing and abstract questions, things outside of school curriculums,” said Nichole Gutierrez ’21, who takes BC Calculus.
Tasnia Shadat ’21, who also takes BC Calculus, said, “It also helps with the SAT and other standardized tests because it shapes a basic strategy for you. You can utilize the techniques learned here when you’re stuck. It’s like muscle memory; you can solve problems much faster.”
Any student who wants to compete is welcome to join the club by showing up to one of the practices. The math team meets every Thursday, period nine, in room 151.