Visiting the Museum of Math!

Museum of Math LogoOn Sunday, 2/22, a few members of the Math Team and I had a fantastic day visiting the Museum of Math in Manhattan!

Photos from our trip are online, as well as a few video clips.

We left Williston at 7am and headed south for New Haven where we caught a train at Union Station that took is straight in to Grand Central. We got a quick bite to eat in Grand Central before walking about a mile south to the Museum of Math!

The greatest surprise of the day was how wonderful the weather turned out! Our walk to the Museum of Math was full of sun and the hum of NYC!

Outside the Museum of Math!
Outside the Museum of Math!

Inside the Museum of Math we found two floors filled with a myriad of interactive stations! We immediately had a round on the bike with square wheels…

A bike with square wheels!
A bike with square wheels!

…and then moved over to the “Position, Velocity, and Acceleration” station!

Position! Velocity! Acceleration!
Position! Velocity! Acceleration!

Downstairs we had a fantastic time on the “Right Turn Maze”…

Edit Post ‹ Math Team — WordPress
Right turn maze! Can you find the correct path?

…and the fractal dancing projection booth!

Fractal dancing!
Fractal dancing!

After a solid two hours exploring all of the stations, we went back out into the city and walked north west through Times Square!

Times Square!
Times Square!

We then caught the subway to American Museum of Natural History where we saw the “Dark Universe” IMAX show at the Hayden Planetarium! Amazing show, especially with the narration by Neil deGrasse Tyson!

Dino!
Dino!

Back outside in the sun, we walked a diagonal across Central Park, to the southwest corner of the park, past the skating rink and many great views of the city.

Central Park
Central Park

We then walked south down 5th avenue, checking out the shops and making a pass by the Rockefeller skating rink.

Rockefeller
Rockefeller

We then wrapped up our time in the city with a very tasty Japanese dinner, before hoping back on a train at Grand Central bound for New Haven.

We made it back to campus around 9:45pm, excited by all that we had seen and done during the day. We can’t wait to return next year!

NEML #5: Results

The Williston Math Team just finished taking the fifth round of the New England Math League competition, scoring a very respectable 21!

NEML #5: Room 1
NEML #5: Room 1
NEML #5: Room 2
NEML #5: Room 2

22 students participated in this round of the New England Math League, with participants spanning 7th through 12th grades! Each competitor had 30 minutes to work by themselves on the same 6 questions. Each question was worth one point and calculators could be used.

With our round 5 score of 21, our team score now stands at 119.

Our average score per participant this round was 2.68.

The next NEML competition will be held on Tuesday, March 24th at 3pm in Schoolhouse 27. Anyone is welcome to participate!

Overall top scorers by grade after 4 rounds:
7th: Kenneth Wang (9)
8th: Ryan Dwyer (7)
9th: Jack Lee (25)
10th: Nam Pham (9)
11th: Mike Huang (8)
12th: Umi Keezing (23)

Here’s everyone who scored a 3 or higher:

First Name

Last Name

Grade

NEML 5: Total

Jack (Dong Ha)

Lee

9

5

Soo Jeong

Han

12

4

James

Kim

12

4

Loren

Po

12

4

Michael

Tran

12

4

Cade

Zawacki

12

4

Lena

Gandeva

12

3

Umi

Keezing

12

3

Gleb

Paschenko

12

3

Emily

Peirent

12

3

Matt

Steinberg

12

3

Molly

Zawacki

10

3

Cici

Zhang

12

3

Derrick

Zhao

9

3

Shirley

Zhou

9

3

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

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

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.

NEML Standings, AMC 10/12 Signups, and NYC!

Williston NEML High Scorers
Williston NEML High Scorers

The next Math Team meeting will take place Tuesday, 2/3 from 3 to 3:30pm in SH25. Anyone is welcome to attend!

+NEML
The league-wide results for the 4th round of the New England Math League are in… and we did very well! Our current overall score of 98 puts us at 23rd in all of New England (out of 141 teams) and 12th (out of 80 teams) in MA!

A special shoutout goes out to Umi Keezing and Shrley Zhou for their perfect scores!

You can view the current league-wide score report document, and complete team stats on the results page.

The next NEML competition will be on Tuesday, 2/17 from 2:35 to 3pm in SH25. You must start the competition before 3pm.

AMC-lgo+AMC 10/12
The American Mathematics Competition  10 & 12 will take place on Wednesday, 2/25 from 8:30 to 10am in Plimpton. The competition is open to any Williston student who registers online by Wednesday, 2/11 @ 3pm.

The AMC 10 is a 25-question, 75-minute, multiple choice examination in secondary school mathematics containing problems which can be understood and solved with algebra and geometry concepts. The AMC 12 is a 25-question, 75-minute, multiple choice examination in secondary school mathematics containing problems which can be understood and solved with pre-calculus concepts. Two different versions of the contests are given on two dates, about two weeks apart, in February. Each AMC 10 and AMC 12 contest contain about 12 of the same math problems.

In general, all 11th graders and above should sign up for the AMC 12 and all 10th graders and below should sign up for the AMC 10. Both exams are given at the same time and you can only take one.

Museum of Math Logo+NYC Trip
The Williston Math Team will be making a day trip to New York City on Sunday, 2/22. We’ll be visiting the Museum of Math, eating a couple fun meals, and exploring Manhattan!

You can read complete details about the trip right here. In order to participate in the trip, you must sign up online by Friday, 2/6 @ 3pm.