Tag Archives: neml

3 competitions in one week!

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It’s a busy time of year for the Williston Math Team!

The next round of the New England Math League (#3) will take place on Tuesday, December 13th from 2:35 to 3:35pm in Schoolhouse 25. Anyone at any level of math is encouraged to participate! No signup is required. Just show up any time before 3:05 with a pencil and a calculator. The competition takes 30 minutes.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

HMMTOn Saturday, 11/12, eleven members of the Williston Math Team traveled to Harvard to compete in the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament!

Williston @ HMMT!
Williston @ HMMT!
Steven Wang
Steven Wang

There were over 800 competitors in attendance on 147 teams from around the world! We competed as two teams (Williston X and Y) and scored quite well! Williston X finished in 68th place and Williston Y finished 121st!

Complete results can be found here: Williston Results, Complete Event Results

Steven Wang earned particular recognition by finishing 119th out of 813 competitors! Congratulations Steven!

All of the problems (and solutions) from the competition are available online right here. Give them a try!

NEML-logoOn Tuesday, 11/15, twelve students sat for the second round of the New England Math League, earning an excellent team score of 24!

Here are the top scorers:

First Name

Last Name

Grade

NEML Total

NEML 2 Score

Steven

Wang

9th

11

6

Ethan

Huang

9th

9

5

Simon

Kim

10th

5

5

Josh

Calianos

11th

8

4

Chloe

Lee

12th

4

4

Nancy

Kang

12th

8

3

Hanzhang (Derrick)

Zhao

12th

7

3

Complete NEML results can be found on the results page. (Ask Mr. Seamon for the password.)

AMC-lgoAlso on Tuesday, 11/15, twenty three Middle School students sat for the AMC8 math competition!

AMC8 @ Willistion
AMC8 @ Willistion

Everyone had a wonderful time and we look forward to receiving the competition results in a couple weeks!

Posted in: AMC 8, Competitions, HMMT, NEML

And we’re off!

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Alan Touring - Our hero! :)
Alan Turing – Our hero! 🙂

The Williston Math Team met for the first time this academic year on Tuesday, 9/20! We talked about the upcoming year, practiced NEML questions, watched the trailer for A Brilliant Young Mind and had a bunch of fun with math!

Here are the big takeaways:

I’ll be sharing lots of material through our team OneNote notebook. If you’ve been added to the notebook you’ll be able to access it right here.

This year the Math Team will meet on Green Mondays from 3 to 3:30pm in SH25. Anyone is welcome to attend any meeting! Our first regular meeting will take place this coming Monday, 9/26 at 3pm! See ya’ll there!

The New England Math League competitions will take place in SH25 on the following dates: 10/24, 11/15, 12/13, 1/16, 2/13, and 3/21. Anyone at ANY level of math can sit for the 30 minute competition. You may use a calculator. You must start taking the competition between 2:35 and 3:05pm.

The New England Math League competition for 7th and 8th graders will take place on either 2/21 or 2/28 in the Middle School. Anyone in 7th or 8th grade is welcome to compete.

The AMC 8 competition will take place on 11/15 in WB. Anyone in 7th or 8th grade can compete.

The AMC 10/12 competition will take place on 2/15/17 most likely in Plimpton. Anyone at any level of math is welcome to compete.

The HMMT competition will take place on 11/12/16 at Harvard. We will be bringing at least 2 teams of 6 students each to compete.

The Math Majors of America competition will take place in April at Yale. We will be bringing at least two teams of 6 students each to compete.

You can learn lots more about each competition right here.

Posted in: Competitions, Meetings

NEML3 and AMC8 Results

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The next math team meeting is on Tuesday, 1/12 from 2:45 to 3:30 in Schoolhouse 25. The next Math Team competition is on Tuesday, 1/19 from 2:35 to 3:35, also in Schoolhouse 25. The competition lasts 30 minutes and you must begin before 3:05. You may use a calculator. Any student at any level of math is encouraged to participate!

Complete math team information is always available online at WillistonBlogs.com/MathTeam.

The latest competition results are in and they are great!

AMC-lgo

In the AMC8, here are our top scorers:

Last Name

First Name

Total Score

Award

Wang           

Kenneth     

15

Winner – Gold

McElhone Yates

Ruby        

12

Silver

Toth           

Jonathan    

11

Bronze

Martin Gonzalez

Tadea

11

Bronze

NEML

In the 3rd round of the New England Math League, we scored very well, earning a team score of 28! Our overall current team score of 68 puts us in the top 40 out of all schools in New England!

Here are our top scores for round 3:

First Name

Last Name

Grade

Score

Tanmay

Khale

12th

 6

Tomasz

Paluchowski

11th

6

Shirley

Zhou

10th

6

Pinky

King

12th

5

Kevin

Li

12th

5

Matt

Otting

11th

5

Derrick

Zhao

10th

5

Complete results can be found on the results page. (Email Mr. Seamon for the password.)

Posted in: Competitions

Everest, Enlightenment, and Cash: Be like Andrew Wiles and join the Math Team!

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This morning I gave an announcement in assembly on why I think everyone should join the Math Team: Everest, Enlightenment, and Cash!

Everest

Everest, enlightenment, and cash

Who wants to see the hardest math problem in the world?

What if I told you everyone in this room could understand the problem?

Let’s get warmed up.

1-Josh-NEW

Who can tell me the answer to any of these questions?

If you had a calculator, could you solve them all?

2-Josh

3,4,5 and 5,12,13 and 7,24,25 are called Pythagorean Triples. How many of them do you think there are?

More than a millennium ago, people started looking for other triples… for higher powered triples with all positive integers. Solutions to equations like these:

3-Josh

As hard as people searched, no one could seemingly find any. But not finding something doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily there. So people kept searching… and searching.

Are you ready to see the hardest math problem in the world?

4-Josh

In 1637 Pierre de Fermat wrote in the margins of a famous book called Arithmetica that he had a proof but it was too large to fit into the margin.

Mathematicians kept looking for a proof. For 50 years, for 100 years… for 300 years.

The search ended in 358 years later in 1995 when Andrew Wiles, a professor at Princeton, completed a proof.

Why? What’s the value? Why did Andrew Wiles devote 7 years of his life to solving a problem that had fascinated him since the age of 10?

Everest: The tallest mountain in the world of math was THERE.

Enlightenment: In the process of creating his proof, Andrew Wiles created who new fields of math that help us understand how the Universe works.

Cash: He has been awarded a tremendous amount of money for his proof. In fact, in 2000, the Clay Institute named seven “Millennium Problems”. A correct solution to any one of the problems results in a $1,000,000 prize. At of today, six of the problems remain unsolved.

If you have any interest in climbing Everest, finding enlightenment, and becoming rich, then….

5-Josh

Join the math team.

2/17: Anyone can show up to participate in the New England Math League. After 4 rounds we are holding a very strong 23rd place out of all 141 teams in New England, and 14 out of 80 in MA. No sign up is necessary. Just show up!

2/22: Come to New York City with us! We have a couple spots left on our bus! Sign up right here!

2/25: Sign up to compete in the American Mathematics Competition. This is the first level competition to find the team that will represent the United States in the International Math Olympiad. Sign up right here!

Remember, you can have it all: Everest, Enlightenment, and Cash.

Posted in: Announcements

A BIG two weeks!

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The Math Team has been busy! Here’s what’s coming up:

Tuesday, 12/2: Math Team meeting, 3-3:30pm, SH25
Monday, 12/8: USA Math Talent Search #2 due. Math Team meeting, 2:50-3:30pm, SH25.
Tuesday, 12/9: NEML #3, 3-3:30, SH27 [Anyone can participate!]
Tuesday, 12/16: Math Team meeting, 3-3:30pm, Sh25

Here’s what been going on for the past two weeks:

On the 11th, 28 students participated in the second round of the New England Math League. You can read all about the competition right here.

HMMT
What an event!

On the 15th, 6 students and I traveled to Harvard for the Harvard-MIT Math Competition! In all, 140 teams were present from all over the US and beyond!

There were over 800 students competing!

The competition was broken into four rounds: two individual and two team that you can learn more about right here. It’s was an incredible event to behold. So much amazing math energy all in one place.

Our competitors found the rounds challenging but quite fun!

The last round (GUTs) was particular entertaining: Teams worked together and ran their solutions to the graders for immediate scoring. Each problem was worth differing amounts of points ranging from 1 to 15.  All of the coaches and spectators were in another room watching the live scoreboard update in real time!

Overall we had a GRAND time and were very happy with our results which you can view right here. We can’t wait to return for HMMT 2015!

On the 17th, the Math Team had its regular meeting and spent the majority of the time working on the PUMaC (Princeton) Power Competition questions. Our PUMaC remote team is comprised of: James Kim, Ray (DongHo) Kim, Jack (Dong Ha) Lee, Alicia Lima, Nam Pham, Michael (Nghia) Tran, Derrick Zhao, and Shirley Zhou.

Math Team Meeting FUN! :)
Math Team Meeting FUN! 🙂

On the 18th, 22 middle students sat for the AMC 8 math competition. The students had 40 minutes to complete 25 multiple choice questions. This is the first time we’ve run the AMC 8 and it was really exciting to have a quarter of the whole middle school choose to participate!

 

Posted in: Competitions

11/3 Meeting

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Despite having a limited amount of time due to the daylight savings-induced modified schedule, 17 students and I got through lots of fun Math Team work!

Screen Shot 2014-11-03 at 4.00.32 PM

We worked through four more NEML practice problems spanning all sorts of topics. You can view the problems (and answers) right here (PDF).

I encouraged everyone to work on the Math Talent Search problems and turn in work to me by Wednesday, morning, 11/5 at the absolute latest. (I have to submit the work online by 3pm that day.)

We talked about the upcoming events:
Tuesday, 11/11: NEML #2, 3 to 3:30pm in SH27
Saturday, 11/15: HMMT @ Harvard
Monday, 11/17: Math Team Meeting, 2:50 to 3:30pm in SH25
Tuesday, 11/18: AMC 8, 2:30 to 3:30pm in WB

Complete competition details can be found on the Competitions page.

There’s also still a little time to get in on the jersey order. $25 payments are due by the 11/17 team meeting. You can sign up for a jersey right here.

Posted in: Meetings

10/20 Meeting

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We just had another fantastic meeting of the Math Team! 21 students attended spanning all six grades!

Screen Shot 2014-10-20 at 3.39.28 PM

 

At the meeting we discussed the first New England Math League competition (NEML1), went over the competition schedule, discussed the HMMT & PUMaC rosters, worked on practice problems, talked about team jerseys, our trip to NYC, and worked on lots of practice problems. Here are the main action items:

1) This is your last chance to fill out the HMMT & PUMaC info survey. I will be locking in our rosters at 3pm on 10/21. Don’t miss your chance to be considered for one (or both!) of these amazing competitions!

2) Please fill out the jersey info form by this Wednesday, 10/22 @ 6pm if you want to get a team jersey.

3) Keep on working on NEML, AMC, and HMMT practice problems! Lots of them are located in the Math Team OneNote notebook.

USAMTS-Logo4) The USA Math Talent Search is going on right now! Any MS or HS student can participate. You need to work on the problems by yourself and submit them to me (Mr. Seamon) by 11/4 so I can submit them online by 11/5. You can download the problems right here and learn more about the competition right here.

5) Our day trip to New York City is preliminarily scheduled for Saturday, 12/13. The plan is to leave around 7am, catch the train in New Haven to Grand Central, and then to spend the whole day in Manhattan where we’ll visit the Museum of Math and Google. More info coming soon.

Screen Shot 2014-10-20 at 4.42.50 PM

Posted in: Meetings

10/6 Meeting

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We just had another fantastic meeting. 15 students attended, representing all grades at Williston. We worked on AMC math problems, talked about the upcoming first NEML competition (10/14!), and discussed the HMMT and PUMaC. Big take aways:

Screen Shot 2014-10-06 at 3.55.21 PM

1) All team members should let Mr. Seamon (jseamon@williston.com) know by this Friday, 10/10 if they are able to attend the HMMT (11/15) and/or PUMaC (11/22). Both events are all day. We’d leave campus early and get back late. It looks like we’ll have space for everyone who wants to compete.

2) The first NEML contest will be given on Tuesday, 10/14. The contest will begin at 3:00pm SHARP in Schoolhouse 27. You must be inside the room before 3:00pm. The contest will last 30 minutes.

Posted in: Meetings