West San Jose Resident
News
Students turn out to be problem-solvers
More than 320 students, from 19 schools in the Bay Area, gathered Jan. 19 at Miller Middle School in West San Jose with the hope of advancing through the second round of the annual Miller Math Marathon.
Each school sent 16 students on four teams to participate in two rounds of problem solving.
"We'd like to encourage a greater number of students to enjoy math and to participate in math contests," said Pallavi Shah, a math teacher at Miller who began planning for the competition last November with the help of volunteers.
The volunteers included Miller school alumni who now attend Lynbrook and Cupertino high schools and students, parents and teachers from the participating schools.
The annual competition is sponsored by Miller Middle School, California Mathematics Council, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics San Francisco Council.
One of the goals of the competition is giving students an opportunity to solve non-routine math problems.
During the first round of the competition, teams had to complete written tests under a time limit.
Steve Blasberg, a math professor at West Valley College, recited problems during round two of the tournament. In this countdown-buzzer round, about eight students faced each other at the same time. They had little time to complete very complicated math problems and buzz in with the correct answer.
Meanwhile, proctors and graders from various schools graded the written tests students had taken prior to the countdown round.
The top five teams at each grade level were announced at the end of the competition. The top 15 students from all grade levels were awarded trophies at a ceremony.
Miller teams won the second and third places at the eighth-grade level, first and second places at the seventh-grade level and second place at the sixth-grade level.
The first-place winners in the sixth- and eighth-grade level were teams from Redwood Middle School in Saratoga.
Miller student Keegan Mendonca was a first-place individual winner at the seventh-grade level, followed by Kai Xiao from Challenger Middle School in Sunnyvale.