Sophomore hones math skills

Sophomore Matthew Lee

When a 6-year-old Matthew Lee first witnessed his older brother’s middle school math team winning a national competition, his immediate reaction was a desire to achieve the same—yet not out of passion for the subject. He simply wanted to win the complementary laptop.

Now, nine years later, the sophomore has found himself immersed in the field of mathematics for more than just the material prizes. With four older siblings ages 19, 20, 23 and 24, Lee has developed interests similar to those of his familial mentors.

“I got into math because of my brother David,” Lee said. “However, he didn’t only spark my interest for math, he also helped me to try and achieve that goal for Mathcounts, [a middle school math competition].”

In addition to helping Lee foster his skills at home, Lee’s siblings have always been there to motivate him to work harder and try his best.

“[My brother would say], ‘since you started this early, if you work hard, you’ll definitely make it,” Lee said. “Even though I don’t do Mathcounts anymore, my many siblings still encourage me in every math competition I go to.”

In 7th grade, Lee represented Redwood Middle School’s Mathcounts team and progressed to one of the toughest regional competitions at Santa Clara County. During the same year, Lee qualified for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) after scoring 123 out of 150 points and placing within the top 1 percent of participants in the American Mathematics Competition 10 (AMC).

During his freshman year, Lee took the California Math League contest (CAML) and scored 30 out of 36 possible points. In addition, Lee participated in the Mandelbrot math competition as well as the Stanford Math Tournament. Lee is currently one of the high school coaches for the Redwood Middle School math club.

Yet despite all the high-achieving glamour floating around the Lee household, he claims that being surrounded by intellect has added no pressure onto himself.

“They really do add to my interest when they tell me about the cool things they’ve been learning about, or when I talk to them about things I’ve been thinking about,” Lee said. “All pressure on me is added by myself.”

Lee’s interest in math stems primarily from his innate fascination with the subject. As an broad subject with seemingly endless horizons, mathematics captivates Lee because “it’s so mind-blowing to think about.”

“A cool part of math is looking at the paradoxes found when dealing with probability and infinity,” Lee said. “Did you know that there’s a number out there such that if we knew enough of its digits, we could prove any mathematical theorem in the world?”

Besides mathematics, some of Lee’s other hobbies include badminton, computer and board games, coding, snowboarding and hanging out with his family when they’re home. However, his main academic interest remains math, which he plans on pursuing in college.

“I always think to myself is, ‘If I skipped college, I would be so sad because I wouldn’t be able to learn the even cooler things in math,’” Lee said.