Mathcounts Competition Held at LSC, Part of Nationwide Math Competitions in February
Mathcounts Competition Held at LSC, Part of Nationwide Math Competitions in February
MATHCOUNTS COMPETITION
February 12, 2013
The Northeast Vermont Chapter of MATHCOUNTS held its annual competition at Lyndon State College on February 9. Twenty five middle school students from five schools participated. Students competed individually and in teams, in written and fast-paced oral matches, on subjects that include probability, statistics, algebra, number theory, and geometry.
Lyndon Town School took first place in the team competition. Coach Kandi Greaves has developed a winning strategy that has lead to their second second win in as many years. Thaddeus Stephens School, coached by Jonathan Snyder. Third place went to the team from Miller’s Run School coached by Patrick Ham. Also participating were St. Paul’s Catholic School, coached by Madalyn Ledoux and Danville School, coached by Tiffany Santy and assistant coach Brady Rainville.
Madalyn Sanborn from Lyndon Town School took first place in the individual competition and first place in the countdown round. Sophie Lamar from Thaddeus Stephens took second overall and second place in the countdown round. Ten students competed in the public countdown round. In this competition, everyone can see the questions while two students race each other and the 45 second clock to answer.
Logan DeShone and Nicholas Norheim from Danville took third and fourth place and will be going to the state competition along with the teams from Lyndon and Thaddeus Stephens. The state competition is at Vermont Technical College on March 16.
In addition to the top two teams from each region, eight additional teams will be chosen from the highest scoring teams in all the regional competitions in Vermont. After these teams are chosen, the top four students not on a competing team will go from our area.
The local MATHCOUNTS competition couldn’t happen without the combined efforts of many people. The coaches work with their students all year long to prepare. On the day of the competition, parents, teachers, former competitors, and coaches pitch in to help coordinator Daisy McCoy, a math professor at Lyndon State College, run the event.
Regional MATHCOUNTS competitions are happening all over the United States during the month of February. The questions must remain secret until all groups have competed, questions are then released to the coaches and to the public. Try your math sense with these three puzzlers from previous competitions: Jaime can paint a wall in 20 minutes, and Ellie can paint the same wall in 15 minutes. If they work together, how many minutes will it take them to paint one wall of this size? (Answer: 9 minutes.) The average age of six people in a room is 30 years. A 20-year-old person leaves the room. What is the average age of the five remaining people, in years? (Answer: 32.) The integer A67,83B where A and B are the first and last digits of the integer, respectively, is divisible by 15. What is the largest possible sum of A and B? (Answer: 12.)