All 700 or so Mathcounts competitors throughout Montana were wearing a shirt designed by Sussex seventh-grader Suzanne Sarolf. While the shirt features only mathematical symbols and the contest name, Sarolf's colleagues knew they were wearing home colors.
“She's our artist-in-residence here,” said Sussex seventh- and eighth-grade teacher Bente Winston. “And part of the prize was that the school didn't have to pay the $160 entry fee.”
Sussex's other competitors this year were Carl Jensen, Sayre White, Sarolf, Forest Chaput, Jack Klempay and Morgan Trigg.
The contest has several stages. The first involves solving 30 problems in 40 minutes, with no calculators allowed. The second, called the target round, pops up two problems every six minutes for 24 minutes.
The final team portion challenges the four-student groups with 10 problems to be solved in 20 minutes. Calculators are allowed in that round.
Problems may cover geometry, algebra, probability, number theory or general logical problem-solving techniques. They must calculate the chance of certain combinations of heads and tails coming out of a series of coin flips, or determine the pattern of a series of numbers.
“It can be nerve-wracking,” said Douglas. “You have all that pressure on you and if you don't do well, it brings down the rest of the team.”
“It's like a marathon for your brain,” Sarolf added.
“Halfway through, I ate a huge lunch and then felt like sleeping,” said Klempay, who will be an alternate for the state team. “Actually, I did get some sleep.”
To train, Winston's students practiced on old Mathcounts “workouts,” pages of problems that might make a high school SAT-taker blanch. They also worked on strategies for how to approach a problem, regardless of the subject or discipline it involved.
The training pays off in unexpected ways. Barlow put his math skills to use in designing circuit boards for ham radio components. Klampay said he often used his experience to calculate the true value of sales at the grocery store.
“You see the bizarre links between things that, without math, you wouldn't have noticed,” said Douglas. “Like the way the needles on a pine cone are in the Fibonacci sequence, or why a frame with the Golden Ratio is most pleasing.”
(For the rest of us, the Fibonacci sequence produces numbers where each is the sum of the two before it: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc. The Golden Ratio is used to draw the ideal rectangle, with the long side approximately 1.6 times the length of the short side. The actual number is an unending fraction, like pi.)
In Thursday's competition, a team from Washington Middle School placed second. It included Alec Patterson, Josh Hamilton, Adam Cook and Billy Haniszewski, with Keogh Paulson placing as an individual competitor.
Target Range placed third, with the team of Shevin Halvorson, Anders Windell, Katie Michels and Kim Ledger. Michels also placed as an individual competitor.
The winning teams will compete in Bozeman on March 20. The top four competitors move on to national finals.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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