Farmington Area Students Among Michigan 'Mathletes'

This story was reported and written by Patch intern Julianne Pitcher.

Three Farmington area residents are among 45 Michigan high school “mathletes” on the Michigan All-Star Team, chosen from the top 100 students in last fall’s Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition.

Farmington High freshman Shrihari Bhaskar and junior Priyanka Shanmugasundaram and freshman Joshen Patel from Detroit Country Day School emerged from an original field of about 10,000 students. 

In order to compete in the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) Competition, the Michigan All-Star Team divided into three smaller teams, making this the 24th year that Michigan has participated in the event. As the website, www.arml.com, states, “ARML is the World Series of [high school] mathematics competitions. 

The competition consists of several events, which include a team round, a power question (in which a team solves proof-oriented questions), an individual round, two relay rounds (in which a contestant solves a problem and passes his/her answer to another team member, who uses this answer to solve another problem), and a super relay.

This year, the Michigan All-Star Team competed on the University of Iowa’s campus on June 1 in two divisions, A and B. While participants came from many cities through out the state of Michigan, most of the students were from the greater Detroit area. 

Several mathematics professors helped organize the team: Ruth Favro of Lawrence Technological University, Cap Khoury of University of Michigan, David Friday of Macomb Community College, and Ada Dong of Oakland University.

The Michigan All-Star Team was very pleased with its results this year. The Michigan A1 Reals placed 15th nationally out of 78 teams in the A division and 2nd at the Iowa competition. The Michigan A2 Naturals ranked 59th nationally, and the Michigan B1 Primes participated in the B division, placing 15th nationally out of 61 teams and 5th at the Iowa site.