AMC Michigan Coordinator Report

During the 2007-2008 academic year, 9,295 Michigan students participated in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) -- 5,738 students from 80 schools in AMC8 and 3,557 students in AMC10/12. There were 293 more participating students than last academic year, even though Michigan has been in a difficult economic situation. However, the number of participating schools has dropped dramatically: 75 from last year's 97 for AMC8 and 81 from last year's 95 for AMC10/12.

Among the 14 Michigan AMC winners, David Lu (Detroit Country Day School) is the sole middle schooler who received a perfect score on the AMC8 and Kevin Wu (Cranbrook Kingswood School) is the only perfect scorer on the AMC10. Further, 153 Michigan students qualified for the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination). All 14 students qualified for the USAMO (United States of America Mathematics Olympiad). Three among them, Justin Brereton (Okemos High School), Nicholas Triantafillou (Saginaw Arts & Sciences Academy), and Allen Yuan (Detroit Country Day School) qualified for MOSP, the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program. Of the five 2007 middle school Edith May Sliffe Award winners in Region 4 (Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio), two are Michigan teachers: Shelley McHugh of Boyd Larson Middle School (Troy) and Tracie Kania, Smith Middle School (Troy). This year's winner for Edyth May Sliffe Awards for Distinguished High School Mathematics Teaching is Barbara Becker of Detroit Country Day School (Beverly Hills) who was nominated by Alan Huang, Andrew Jeanguenat, Allen Yuan, and Neil Gurram, all USAMO qualifiers.

Following our tradition of recognizing the achievements of the AMC winners, their teachers, and their parents, two celebrations were planned. The reception with the Governor is still to be arranged if possible. The Awards Ceremony was held on September 5 at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Oakland University, with Dr. Gary McDonald presenting a lecture on "Random Thoughts on MathCounts and Math Puzzles". Dr. McDonald is a former member and chairman of the Board of Directors of the MATHCOUNTS Foundation and currently an Adjunct Professor of the Mathematics and Statistics Department, Oakland University.

Dr. McDonald examined the MathCounts National Competition results over the past several decades to see if there are any noteworthy trends - e.g., do the same states always appear at the top? How has Michigan done over time? Is Michigan getting better, worse, or staying about the same? What factors might explain significant differences between state results over time? This lends itself to an important question - how do you separate random variation from a true underlying "signal"? Dr. McDonald also let the students take a look at a few math puzzles, "solve" them, and then see what they could learn from them.

These AMC celebration events are funded by the AMC, sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Oakland University, American Mathematical Society, Wolfram Research, and the Art of Problem Solving Foundation. AMS is our new sponsor, which we got by a rare opportunity. Also new for this year, we were able to distribute awards to the winning teachers from one of our sponsors.

Please find the entire list of Michigan AMC winners in the AMC Awards booklet and Award Ceremony pictures here. This website will be moved to its permanent location at the Michigan Section MAA AMC Coordinator site soon.

Special thanks go to Dr. Gu FangMing of General Motors and Professor Grossman of Oakland University, both kindly acted as the photographers for this year's AMC Awards Ceremony.