Over spring break, middle school math chair Vandana Kadam spent her spare time teaching math online to students who were unable to attend school due closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. She asked some of her current students, as well as former students who are now at the upper school, if they would like to assist, and seventh grader Jonathan Xue, eighth graders Claire Luo, Julie Shi, Cynthia Wang, Michelle Wei, Olivia Xu and Ella Yee, and ninth graders Riya Gupta, Stephen Xia and Sally Zhu all jumped at the chance to help. The sessions have continued past spring break and now take place twice a week. “It is so rewarding to see our students taking time from their busy schedules to help other students,” Kadam said. “They do it with tremendous dedication ensuring that the students benefit from the coaching.”
Harker middle school students earned high marks in math competitions in February and March. Fifteen students performed well enough on the American Mathematics Competition 10 (AMC10) to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), held in March. The following scores are the sum of the students’ scores on the AIME, multiplied by 10, and added to their scores on the AMC10. Eighth grader Olivia Xu scored 222 points and was the highest-scoring Harker middle school student. Right behind Xu was Ethan Liu, grade 8, with a score of 210.5, while Angela Liu and Jonathan Xue, both grade 7, each had a score of 197. Eighth grader Emma Gao scored 195. The remaining portions of the AMC, including the AIME II, the US Mathematical Olympiad and Junior Mathematical Olympiad, have been postponed until further notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In February, students took part in the Bay Area Math Olympiad, where the Harker middle school team’s score of 93 made it the top placing team. Olivia Xu was the top scorer for Harker with a score of 32 out of 35 points, placing second overall. Ethan Liu took fourth place with a score of 31 and eighth grader Aniketh Tummala, with a score of 30 points, received an honorable mention. Seventh grader Jonathan Xue’s 29 points also earned an honorable mention.
Last week, Anu Aiyer’s AP Statistics students were recognized by the New York Times for their contributions to a discussion on a graph posted in the Times’ “What’s Going On in This Graph?” series. Each week, the Times posts a graph and invites students to participate in live discussions on the information it contains. The April 16 graph depicted consumer spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing how spending habits changed during the last week of March as compared to the same week in 2019. Students were invited to discuss what they noticed about the graph, ask questions about the data presented and come up with a headline for the graph that encapsulates its main idea. Aiyer’s students’ headline, “COVID Troubles & Fiscal Bubbles: How COVID-19 Changed Our Spending Habits,” was one of four recognized.
“We have been doing this in my classes throughout the year and this time we sent in our analysis and out of 400 entries, our names were selected,” Aiyer said.
Earlier this month, eighth graders Angelina Hu and Olivia Xu were among five students to win the inaugural Maryam Mirzakhani Award in the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) 10A Golden Section (consisting of Northern California, Northern Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific U.S. Islands). This award is given to the top scoring young women in the competition and is named for the Iranian mathematician and Stanford professor who was the first woman to receive the prestigious Fields Medal. The AMC is held annually by the Mathematical Association of America and tasks contestants with solving 25 problems in 75 minutes. The AMC 10 is intended for students in grade 10 and below.
Harker upper school students performed well in a pair of recent math contests. Yesterday, junior Jeffrey Kwan received an honorable mention from the Mathematical Association of America for being one of the top scorers in the 2019 USA Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO), among 300,000 participants.
In April, Harker placed ninth in National Assessment & Testing’s Four-By-Four competition due to the high scores posted by a team of sophomores comprising Arya Maheshwari, Luisa Pan, Sidra Xu and Nicholas Yi. The contest has teams of four solve a series of problems over 10 rounds, each lasting three minutes.
On March 5, nearly 330 middle school students from 15 schools attended the 18th annual Diana Nichols Math Invitational. In addition to the 14 South Bay schools participating in the event (including Harker), Las Vegas’ Coral Academy of Science made the trip from out of state for the third consecutive year.
The high level of competition was evident throughout the event. A four-way tie in the grade 6 team event led to a tiebreaker that resulted in Harker’s team (Audrey Cheng, Juliana Li, Angela Liu, Katerina Matta, Kashish Priyam, Aarush Vailaya and Jonathan Xue) taking first place. Harker’s grade 8 team (Arjun Barrett, Brian Chen, Amruta Dharmapurikar, Alex Lan, Krish Maniar, Stephen Xia and Annli Zhu) also took first place, while the grade 7 team (Emma Gao, Angelina Hu, Ansh Sheth, Julie Shi, Michelle Wei, Aniketh Tummala and William Zhang) placed second.
Harker students also were successful in the individual event, with Stephen Xia, Arjun Barrett and Alex Lan taking first, third and fourth, respectively, at the grade 8 level. At the grade 7 level, Heidi Lu placed third, Aniketh Tummala took fourth and William Zhang finished fifth. Angela Liu placed second in the grade category.
The object of this year’s estimation contest was a “HMI 2019” sign made of plastic googly eyes. Contestants guessed at the number of googly eyes in the sign, with Megan Brezlin of Sunnyvale’s Peterson Middle School winning the contest with her estimate of 2,596, remarkably close to the actual number of 2,603.
Middle school math students had a great showing at a the Santa Clara chapter Mathcounts contest, held Feb. 16 at the upper school campus. A team of four grade 8 students – Riya Gupta, Ashley Hu, Connie Jiang and Sally Zhu – took first place in the team portion of the event, repeating last year’s success. They will appear at the state-level competition, to be held March 23 at Stanford University.
In individual competition, eighth grader Rohan Bhowmik took second place overall, winning a tiebreaker over Ashley Hu, who placed third. Both had a score of 44 out of 46 points. Other notable placers were Sally Zhu in fifth place with 43 points, seventh grader Ethan Liu in seventh place with 42 points, Angelina Hu in 10th place with 41 points, Riya Gupta in 12th place with 40 points, Connie Jiang in 13th with 40 points (after a tie-breaking decision based on which problems each student solved) and seventh grader Emma Gao in 16th with 38 points. Bhowmik and Liu also qualified for the state competition.
A total of 112 students from 14 schools were present at the contest, which is believed to be one of the toughest chapter-level competitions in the country. “This is a highly competitive chapter as can be seen … with every point differential,” said middle school math department chair Vandana Kadam. “It is commendable that eight Harker students placed in the top 16.”
Late last month, middle school math teacher and department chair Vandana Kadam received the Edyth May Sliffe Award for Distinguished Teaching in Middle School and High School. The Mathematical Association of America presents this award to teachers who foster student interest in mathematics by competing in the yearly American Mathematics Competitions.
Candidates are nominated based on recommendation letters from colleagues, and selected for the award based on criteria such as improving AMC scores, increased student participation and increased numbers of students invited to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) and the USA Mathematics Olympiad (USAMO). Congrats to Ms. Kadam on this well-earned recognition!
At last month’s MathCounts National Competition in Washington, D.C., the California team, featuring eighth grader Rishab Parthasarathy (pictured, second from left) and coached by middle school math teacher Vandana Kadam (far left), took second place overall. The event included 224 competitors from 56 teams, one from each of the 50 states and three U.S. territories (the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam), as well as teams representing the District of Columbia, State Department and Department of Defense. All of the members of California’s team were among the top 10 percent.
The second-place performance at MathCounts capped off a successful spring semester for middle school math students, who also had a stellar showing at the California Math League (CAML) contest in February, where all three middle school teams placed first in their region, which contains Placer, Santa Clara and Yolo Counties. Top scorers for grade 6 were Gautam Bhooma, Varun Fuloria, Emma Gao and Aniketh Tummala, who each scored 33 points, and Joe Li, Claire Luo, Julie Shi, Ella Yee and William Zhang with 31 points. In grade 7, Sally Zhu scored a perfect 35, Riya Gupta had 34 points and Tiffany Chang, Ashley Hu, Anthony Tong and Sabrina Zhu each earned 33 points. Eighth graders Alexander Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy, Kevin Wang and Gloria Zhu earned a perfect 35 points, while classmates Mark Hu, Angela Jia, Rohan Thakur and William Zhao scored 34. Esther Wu earned an impressive 33 points.
Second grader Manalee Chowdhury was recently awarded a bronze medal from the RSM Foundation after competing in the organization’s International Math Contest in March and April. Competing at the grade 3-4 level, Chowdhury answered 13 out of 14 problems correctly in an online 30-minute challenge to qualify for the next round of the competition. The next stage was held in person at various locations around the country, following the format of European Mathematical Olympiads. Bronze medalists represent the top 15 percent of the thousands of participants in the contest, according to the RSM Foundation’s website.
Chowdhury also took second place in the nation in her age group – in which more than 4,000 students participated – as well as in California in the annual Math Kangaroo competition, held in March. More than 29,000 students nationwide took part in this year’s Math Kangaroo, with more than 8,000 hailing from California. Congratulations!