Mathematically Minded

A winning team usually possesses talent, a willingness to work hard and work together, a love of competition, and luck. This describes members of the NMH Math Team to a T, according to Khiem Do Ba, a math teacher and advisor to the math team.

The mathematically minded group participated in several events recently and notched up success. Here’s a rundown:
New England Math League is a series of six monthly math competitions between all high schools in New England—182 of them this year. After the first four rounds, NMH is ranked fourth in New England, racking up 117 points out of the maximum 120. These exact contests are offered (in different league names) across the country, so that thousands of schools in the US participate in this competition. Based on the 117 points NMH has accumulated by the end of the fourth round, NMH is ranked 21st in the nation. On February 24, the team completed the fifth round with another perfect team score. The top and perfect scorers in this round were Jack Chiu ’09, Minh Doan ’09, Seonmin (Will) Heo ’10, MinHyung (Daniel) Kang ’11, and Patipan (Gee) Prasertsom ’09.

American Mathematics Competitions is an annual event that is open to high school students in the US and around the world. Each year, about 40,000 students participate. Top scorers are invited to compete in the second round called American Invitation Mathematics Examination. On February 10, 28 NMH students (including regular math team members) participated in the first round and eight students have been invited back to the second round April 1. The top 500 scorers in April receive an invitation to the grueling final round.

Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament is an annual event for high school students; it takes place alternately at Harvard and MIT. This year, 13 members of the math team, split into two teams, traveled to MIT for the competition. Participating were 900 students, 95 schools, and 154 teams from across the country and around the world. NMH team members worked extremely hard and made improvements compared to last year’s results.