A BEARY GOOD TIME AT SLC

Six Tahoma High School math team members are headed to Salt Lake City July 19 – 24. Representing Tahoma in calculus are Jon Gort, Melissa Anthony, Dylon Maertens, Jennifer Peng, and Sam Stevens; while Rhiana Martin is competing in Pre-Calculus. These members will give presentations and compete for 4 days on a variety of topics with students from around the world.

Last summer the team was very successful! THS came home with multiple trophies. A crowning achievement was placing 2nd for the team scrapbook that was over 50 pages long and was based upon the animated film Rio. Individually Anthony placed 19th in Rides and Rollercoasters while Martin finished 19th in Gemini and Alex Link placed 18th in Probability.

This year, Sam Stevens is presenting a talk on “The Math of NORAD” which he feels has been a “challenging and yet fulfilling endeavor.” Martin is presenting a talk on secret codes of the NSA.

President Melissa Anthony, a veteran competitor, says going to Nationals “is a unique experience where we are exposed to new mathematical topics of study at an exciting level.”

The team advanced from their State tests where Martin finished 3rd in Games Theory while Anthony placed 5th in Mental Math and Gort placed 9th in Limits & Derivatives and Open Game Theory. Overall Tahoma placed 9th at States.

This year at Nationals Tahoma will be competing in topics such as Speed Math, Mental Math, Game Theory, Limits and Derivatives, Analytical Geometry, Matrices and Vectors, and All About Phi (ϕ) and “e”.

Last summer Peng won a scholarship to attend Stanford University to study Number Theory. This year, she will compete in this topic and show her expertise.

All of the competitors are excited for Nationals, especially the scrapbook team. When Peng was asked what her favorite part of making the scrapbook was, she responded, “Having fun, while being with friends, and bringing the movie to life in a scrapbook.” The scrapbook team highlighted club activities and competitions through their Wreck-It Ralph themed scrapbook.

The Math Team practiced hard all year to make it to Nationals and continue with daily practices over the summer. Sponsor Malinda Shirley said, “I am so proud of these students who have studied extra topics every day this summer to be at their best in SLC. I suspect these students will be just like the temperature there, and soar to the top!” Submitted by Rachel Culp, Vice-President of Mu Alpha Theta (MATH) team.