They are mathletes ever ready to flex some neurons to solve a problem.
One hundred students representing 25 Pennsylvania high schools were in Carlisle Tuesday to participate in the second annual Capital Area Interscholastic Math Competition.
The four-member team from Cumberland Valley High School placed second behind a quartet from the Wyoming Seminary Prep School visiting the mid-state from Kingston, Luzerne County.
Cumberland Valley was ranked third behind Wyoming and a team from Hempfield High School going into the final quiz bowl round of a day-long competition held on the Dickinson College campus, which is on fall break.
Hosted by the Carlisle Area School District, the competition mostly drew teams from a two-hour radius around Cumberland County, said John Campbell, a math teacher at Carlisle High School and coordinator of the event.
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There were also local teams from Mechanicsburg and Boiling Springs high schools.
The competition consisted of two individual tests of 45 minutes each – one of multiple choice questions, the other requiring short numerical answers. A third test allowed all four team members to work collectively on a single answer for each question.
The individual tests each had 20 questions; the team test had 15 questions. The cumulative score of all four members individually and together was used to rank each team going into the final quiz bowl round.
“This is actually one of my favorite competitions,” said Emily Chung, a junior at Cumberland Valley High School who lives in Hampden Township. “The questions are really thought-provoking. They go more in-depth. You really have to think about how to solve them.”
The most challenging phase for her was the team test where the difficulty level was ramped up to balance with the number of mathletes working to solve each problem.
“You had the ability to collaborate with other people so even if you don’t have the answer, you still can figure it out with other people in your group,” said Chung, who placed fifth among the individual rankings Tuesday.
“You can feel their enthusiasm,” said Kelly Brent, math department chair for the Carlisle Area School District and a math teacher at Carlisle High School. “They are here doing math all day, and they just love it.”
Brent said the students who participate in regional math competitions are just as competitive in their field of interest as star athletes who play interscholastic sports.
After each test, the mathletes talked among each other, comparing notes on how they solved each problem. Because Carlisle hosted the event, its math team could not participate. Instead, Carlisle students were on hand Tuesday to help proctor the tests and set-up and tear down each room where the competition was held.
“It’s really cool to see the other side of it and be able to give back in that way,” said Sam Haseman, 17, a senior at Carlisle High School. “It’s great to be able to interact with these people.”
Classmate Braden Kronheim enjoys participating in regional math competitions because the caliber of the questions challenge him to think differently and use concepts outside the normal classroom setting.
Members of the Carlisle math team developed questions for Tuesday’s competition. The questions asked involved pre-calculus, trigonometry, geometry, number theory and statistics and probability.
No calculators allowed. Participants could only use paper and pencil.
The Carlisle team routinely participates in regional math competitions held during spring break at Lebanon Valley College and at such universities as Millersville, Shippensburg and Bucknell.
“Dickinson College was gracious enough to let us use their facilities during their fall break,” Campbell said. The local college provided lunch to participants in Tuesday’s competition without cost to Carlisle school district.
Participating high schools were asked to bring a box of canned goods to Tuesday’s competition so that the food could be donated to the Project SHARE food bank.