Love is the most excellent way

Ben flew to Boston last weekend with seven other math students from various high schools in the Chicago area to participate in the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament. My mother helped out as a proctor and was delighted to be involved.

Ben did very well on one of his two individual tests: he placed 2nd out of 180 students in Calculus (scroll down to Calculus Test to see his result). It was neat that instead of the usual trophy or plaque they gave him an abacus with HMMT 2010 on for coming 2nd. He came 30th overall in the individual rankings (you can see that on this page).

Their team, Chicago Omega, came joint first in their chosen category, Team B (scroll down to Team B to see their result). Ben said the best schools competing chose the harder category, Team A, but even so it’s neat they came joint first! Ben was pleased that his Chicago Omega got better scores than another Chicago area school (IMSA) which specializes in maths and science.

Ben asked me if I knew how to do this question yesterday. It’s on his old practice papers for a middle school math competition. He and Steve (the math PhD!) were both having trouble with it.

I was very happy that for once, I actually thought of a better way of doing it than they did!