Contest News

The 2006 American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) Competition took place on June 3 on the campuses of the University of Iowa, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. A total of 113 teams of 15 students each represented various regions of the United States and Canada, with guest teams from Taiwan.

Twenty-three students, ARML and MMPC veterans, boarded the bus for Iowa City on June 2. They competed in two teams, the Michigan Reals, and an Alternate team combined with eight students from Chicago. The Reals placed 30th out of 33 teams in hotly contested Division A, and the Alternate 3 team was 33rd out of 80 teams in Division B, which was impressive for an Alternate team. At the closing ceremonies in Iowa, the Samuel J. Greitzer Distinguished Coach Award for outstanding service to a regional team was awarded to Bob Messer, Albion C, who founded the All-Stars in 1989, and coached until 2005.

The contest consists of four parts: Team problems, 20 minutes for 10 problems; Power problem, one hour for a sequence of related problems requiring proof; Individual problems, eight problems, 10 minutes for each group of two; and the Relay, short problems requiring a number to be passed back to the next team member. Groups of three get six minutes to complete each of two Relays.

The coaches were Ruth Favro (LTU), Ada Dong (ICAE), and Chris Cartwright (LTU). Assistant coaches were Douglas Li and Jeff Madsen, both from UM-Ann Arbor.

During the 2005–2006 academic year, 11,454 Michigan students participated the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) (7,340 students from 95 schools for AMC8 and 4114 students throughout Michigan for AMC10/12). Among them, there were seven perfect papers for AMC8 and two perfect papers for AMC10. Further, 604 students were qualified for AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Examination), 17 qualified for USAMO (United States of America Mathematics Olympiad), and two qualified for (MOSP) Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program.

Among the five Middle School 2005 Sliffe Award winners in Region 4 (Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio), three are Michigan teachers: Roy Kenneth Downie of Smith Middle School, Randall C. Meono of Detroit Country Day Middle School, and Lynn Ann Serenson from Novi Middle School. Mark Schmitt of Detroit Country Day School, “the man who teaches for the love of working with mathematics and bright high school students”, was the winner of the 2006 Edyth May Sliffe Awards for Distinguished High School Mathematics Teaching.

Following our tradition of recognizing the excellent achievements of the AMC winners, their teachers and their parents, two celebrations have been organized. The reception with the Michigan Governor is still pending. The Awards Ceremony was held on September 14 at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Oakland University, with distinguished speaker Jack Nachman, who presented a lecture on spherical geometry emphasizing the similarities and differences between familiar concepts in plane geometry and trigonometry and their corresponding concepts on the sphere. These events are funded by AMC, sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Oakland University, Wolfram Research, and The Art of Problem Solving Foundation.

The list of Michigan AMC winners can be found in the caption of the picture below (photo by Jerry Grossman (OU)). Ada Dong (ICAE) is the AMC Coordinator for the Section.

Three Michigan College students were honored by the Section for their outstanding performances on the 2005 William Lowell Putnam Examination. They were Fernando Delgado (Ann Arbor, rank 57) , Jeffrey Madsen (Bloomfield, rank 219), and Chris Cunningham (Ann Arbor, rank 256). All were students at UM-AA at the time of the exam.

Pictured (l. to r.): Jack Nachman, Michael Dimattia, Matthew Vengalil, Randy Jia, Neil Gurram,
Alan Huang, Robin He, John Treadway, Ram Bhaskar, Jaewon Kim, Sunil Agarwal, Michael Vo.

Not pictured: Vivek Behera, Steven Chang, Whit Froehlich, Philip Hu, Roger Jia, Chaitanya Malla,
Frederic Sala, Nicholas Triantafillou, Akshar Wunnava, Siyuan Xing, Alex Xu, John Zhou.

Back to the Fall 2006 Newsletter

This page is maintained by Scott Barnett.