Much like any competetive endeavor, math contest season stretches on for months.

  1. I mentioned the AMC contest several weeks ago when the students were freaking out about being snowed out of the A-date and missing a chance at qualifying for a subsequent chain of events that they believe to be both necessary and sufficient for gaining admission to Harvard University. These contests are multiple choice, and the students record their answers on machine-readable answer sheets. These answer sheets are mailed to AMC headquarters where the staff there scans them and then determines the top few percent of test-takers. Those students get to take the next round of tests on Tuesday, March 6. The exams are not scored. The cut-offs have not been announced. Thousands of high strung children (and their tiger parents) are very concerned and emotional about this.

  2. Can we talk about MATHCOUNTS Chapter round? (MATHCOUNTS is a middle school math contest where students travel to a particular place at a particular time and do math problems alone and on teams. “Chapter” means “regional.”) And I mean that question literally, and not in some sort of “We need to talk” sort of way. Allegedly, every Chapter does its thing during the month of February. I had been told that once February is over, then the students can talk about Chapter-level MATHCOUNTS. But there are some very devoted middle school teachers who care a lot more about MATHCOUNTS than I do, and they are insisting that the students can’t talk about MATHCOUNTS.

  3. Let us imagine the behavior of high-achieving middle school students who are immersed in the world of math—and especially math contests—when they are in limbo about whether their AMC 10 scores were sufficient for them to qualify for next round of the competition, and they are not allowed to talk about the other competition that has been occupying their time recently.

  4. While each round has fewer students than the previous round, the pressure gets more intense on the remaining students. And the ones who have fallen by the wayside now get to cheer for their favorites to win it all. (Will Luke come back to win a second year in a row? Tune in this May to find out!) And while I can’t get too excited about the remainder when 90! is divided by 91 (this problem is much easier if you don’t know about Wilson’s Theorem), there are students who are totally immersed in this world, and whose enthusiasm (and propensity for trolling) is apparently unbounded.