Math club continues to thrive in competitions

Despite the graduation of three of its key members, the math club has seen several successes this year. Recently, members competed in two math competitions, placing in the top three schools for a tournament round as well as overall.

On April 7, the math club participated in the Berkeley Math Tournament. The team consisted of seniors Brian Wai and Evan Ye, junior Amanda Chow and sophomores Matthew Lee and Edgar Chen, joined by a sixth member from Lynbrook High. 

After going through individual and team rounds to determine seeding, a tournament round was held with six questions to be solved as a team.

The team did well, competing against teams from Gunn, Lynbrook and Mitty among others. They placed fourth in the team round, third in the tournament round and first in the individual round, won by Wai.

However, at the last local competition of the year, Santa Clara Valley Math Association (SCVMA) field day on April 28, key members Wai and senior Alissa Zhang were not able to participate.

Even so, the team was fortuitous, improving from their overall fourth place last year to this year's third place. Each member placed within the top 15 in their respective math divisions.

"I think we did really well, since some of our top mathletes didn't participate, and we actually improved by one place from last year," freshman Kevin Chiang said.

Notable successes were Ye placing third in the Statistics competition, Chiang  placing second for Open (Trig/Precalc) and Lee and Chow placing second in Leap Frog, an event in which a team of two answers 25 questions in 90 minutes without talking. Junior Edward Dong placed fourth in the Discovery competition, focused on math proofs. 

Chiang said it is an event he is willing to continue with in the coming years.

"It's a good experience and it really helps me measure how much of the material I can bring up," said Chiang.