Math Club Competes in Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament

How do you get to Harvard? One way is to finish at the top of your class, get a perfect score on your SATs, edit the school newspaper and lead the league in goals scored. Another way is to join the Math Club and participate in the annual Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament.

 

That’s exactly what six members of the Westminster Math Club did Saturday, Nov. 12. At sunrise, while the rest of the campus slept, Daniel Chey ’18, Albert Gao ’18, Hyeonjo Jeong ’17, Yuna Lee ’19, Mike Riberdy ’18 and Matthew Swenson ’18 traveled to Cambridge to compete against more than 800 of the best and the brightest math students in the country.

 

Up first were two rounds of individual problem-solving, followed by the team round, in which each group worked together on 10 formidable problems. The day finished with the fast and furious Guts Round, with teams working on increasingly difficult problems and racing up to the scorers’ table once they finished a problem to receive the next one.

 

After lunch, the group met with last year’s Math Club president and four-time participant in the tournament, Wonjune Kang ’16, now a freshman at MIT.

 

Albert Gao was the top finisher for the Martlets in the individual rounds, with a ranking of 117 out of more than 850 students. As a team, the Martlets finished 54th out of more than 150 teams in the guts round, their best placement in recent memory.

 

Math Club advisor, math teacher and the club’s chauffeur, Dan Aber, commented: “It was a long but exhilarating day for the Westminster mathletes. They competed hard but fair, without using their calculators, and gave it their all. The football team would have been proud of them.”