Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, a high school level game-show style competition, has come back to campus this school year. Originally sponsored by former math teacher Dr. Ken Jukes, the event was brought back by calculus teacher David Nezelek.
The competition starts with two rounds of online testing, in which students take online tests to qualify. Two Pine View students, ninth-grader Jack Gallahan and twelfth-grader Alyx Reckahn passed the first test Thursday, Sept. 29, qualifying them to move to the next round. They will then move onto a second round of online testing Wednesday, Oct. 26. Questions on the exams were drawn from numerous field of math including prime number theory, probability, and algebra. “The hardest thing is the speed,” Jack Gallahan said, “since you are only given 15 minutes to complete the test.”
If they perform well on the second round of tests, they will be able to participate in the live games in New York City, featuring 10 high school mathematicians out of the whole United States competing against each other. Winners of the competition win $5,000 for themselves and $5,000 for their school’s math department.
“…less than 10 kids in the nation make it to the final rounds in California, so I don’t expect to make it my freshman year,” Jack Gallahan said. “Having said this, that I am excited to compete in the contest all throughout high school, and possibly make the national contest in later years… I enjoy every opportunity I have to do math.”