Sometimes the solution to a problem is simpler than it looks.
That was one of the lessons the MathCounts A team at Sylvania s Timberstone Junior High School received as its four members practiced last week for their entry next week in the state championships in Columbus.
The more tricks you know about solving problems, the more you solve, Gail Brenner, the junior high s algebra teacher and MathCounts adviser, told her charges early in the hour-long practice. Such tricks include grouping numbers to be added in ways that simplify addition, and recognizing patterns in numbers that eliminate unnecessary steps.
Speed is important in the MathCounts competition especially in the game-show-like Countdown Round, in which the top performers in earlier rounds go head-to-head to pick overall champions.
The three rounds include a speed round in which contestants answer up to 30 questions in 40 minutes, without the assistance of teammates calculators; a longer problem-solving round in which they are individually given eight questions, two at a time, and may use calculators; and a 20-minute, 10-question team round with longer questions that they may solve as a team.
Eighth-grader Zach Rothschild explained that at the start of the team round, he and his teammates quickly scan through the questions to see which ones play toward their mathematical strengths and claim those. Then they work in pairs to solve the problems and check each other s reasoning.
Young Rothschild and teammates Evan Murphy and Ben Perez chose Lance Lu, a seventh-grader, as team captain for two reasons: he has good handwriting, and he s able to be interrupted to write down teammates final answers without losing his train of thought on the problems he s doing.
Some of them are stronger in geometry, some are stronger in algebra, some are stronger in numbers sense, Ms. Brenner said.
Despite his math prowess, young Lu said he had a more practical reason to try out for MathCounts: It s better than writing, and my Dad said I had to do one or the other after school.
Timberstone s MathCounts team and its competitive-writing counterpart, Power of the Pen, both practice at the same time after school.
I guess it s good for later in life, if you want to go into a math career, and math homework is much easier, young Rothschild said, adding that he also runs on the Timberstone track team but is missing one track practice per week to stick with MathCounts.
Along with the Timberstone team, MathCounts teams from Ottawa Hills Junior High School and St. John s Jesuit Academy will represent northwest Ohio in the state championships March 14 at Columbus State College, as will six other area competitors who qualified during regional competition last month at the University of Toledo as individuals even though their teams didn t advance.
Sid Dogra, Mike Wolff, Ella Rohm-Ensing, and Navdeep Bais will represent Ottawa Hills, while Sean Wheelock, Harry Thaman, Connor Bopp, and Dominic Zirbel comprise the St. John s team.
Local individuals who qualified for the state competition are Samin Rai, Alex Leong, and Eric Gou from Perrysburg Junior High School; Sumit Banerjee and Annu Reddy from Maumee Valley Country Day School in Toledo, and Nick Grzegorzewski of Gateway Middle School in Maumee.
Competitors in next year s regionals at UT, meanwhile, will wear T-shirts that young Rothschild designed. His winning entry in this year s T-shirt competition is steeped in math appreciation: MathCounts = (square root of -1): It s Unreal!
Besides being one of the three state-qualifying teams, all four members of the Timberstone A team qualified for the regional competition s 16-player Countdown Round, out of more than 250 contestants from 19 northwest Ohio schools. Ms. Brenner said that was the first time that had happened for any of her teams in the 17 years she s been coaching MathCounts the last 15 of them in Sylvania.
And then we all lost in the first round, young Murphy, a seventh grader, admitted ruefully.
We need to work on our speed, Ms. Brenner responded.
But extra information in a probability question about picking colored marbles from an opaque container still led them astray (see accompanying story), giving Ms. Brenner a coaching point with three practices still to go before the states.
They re really a nice group of young guys, the teacher said after practice, though she then lamented MathCounts typical gender breakdown: It tends to be more boys than girls, which is sad. But Power of the Pen usually has more girls, and you can t do both.
First Published March 3, 2009, 10:17 p.m.
