Mathletes Earn Best Finish Ever at Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament

Have you ever wondered how many ways there are to color the vertices of a triangle red, green, blue or yellow such that no two vertices have the same color? If so, then you would have been a perfect candidate to participate in the 2014 Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament.
 

On Nov. 15, six members of the Westminster Math Club—Sixth Formers Tom Dudzik and Kevin Choi, Fifth Formers Grace Brentano and Wonjune Kang, Fourth Former Cindy Jeong and Third Former Albert Gao —left campus at 6 a.m. to travel to Cambridge, Mass., where they spent four and a half hours tackling problems such as the one above. President Dudzik, their intrepid leader, had been administering problems from the tournament archive since the opening of school. They were ready to compete.
 

The tournament, which is dedicated to promoting mathematical problem solving to high school students, attracted 134 teams consisting of more than 800 of the brightest and most mathematically gifted students in the world. It is organized and staffed entirely by Harvard and MIT undergraduates, who also come up with the tantalizing complex and challenging problems.
 

By the end of the day, the Westminster team was tired and ready to return to campus. However, much to their surprise and delight, they woke up the next morning to discover that they had come in an astonishing 13th place in the team competition, by far their best finish ever. Special recognition goes out to Albert Gao, who finished an impressive 37th out of 738 students in the individual round.
 

“So all in all, it was a fun and rewarding day for the Westminster mathletes,” said the Math Club’s advisor, Dan Aber, who accompanied the students to the tournament.