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Young Math Marvels Wow Teachers and Peers,
Win 50th Annual UCSD Math Honors Contest
Paul K. Mueller | May 7, 2007
OK, class, take a clean sheet of paper and a pencil, and solve this problem (remember, the clock is ticking):
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| Jonny Palm of University City High demonstrates an especially clever solution to a problem during the awards banquet for the 50th Annual UCSD Honors Math Contest.
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Perpendiculars BD and CE are drawn from vertices B and C of triangle ABC to the interior bisectors of angles C and B, meeting them at D and E, respectively. Prove that DE intersects AB and AC at their respective points of tangency, F and G, with the circle that is inscribed in triangle ABC.
Too difficult? Here’s an easier one: Suppose that S is a finite set of points in a plane such that every subset of three points forms the vertices of a triangle with area less than, or equal to, one. Prove that S is contained in some rectangle of area four.
Time’s up; pencils down. Congratulations:
you’ve just been thoroughly humiliated by a
group of San Diego high school students – who
not only mastered those and other problems but did
so in creative, individual ways, arriving at the correct
answers through a variety of mathematical avenues.
These students, their parents and teachers gathered
at the Faculty Club on May 1 for the awards banquet
honoring the winners of the 50th Annual UCSD Mathematics
Honors Contest. Hosted by the department of mathematics,
and smoothly emcee’d by Bruce Arnold, director
of the Math Testing and Placement Program, the contest
involved some 130 students from 20 San Diego high
schools. UCSD professors and math students devised
the questions and helped grade the exams, which were
administered on April 21 in UCSD classrooms.
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| Susana Silva (left), a student at Universidad Iberoamerican in Tijuana, and her math coach Blanca Margarita Parra (center), accept a certificate of achievement from Joan Commons (right), president of the Greater San Diego Math Council. |
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Vincent Le of Westview High School was the top individual scorer, followed by Jeffrey Wu of The Bishop’s School and Josh Wang of Scripps Ranch High School. In team awards, Mira Mesa High School took top honors in the New Schools category; Scripps Ranch finished first in the Competitive category; and La Jolla High School took first place in the Highly Competitive category. A Tijuana high school, Universidad Iberoamericana, took second place in the New Schools category.
The top students opened the ceremony by demonstrating – on overhead screens – their individual solutions to some of the test’s problems. Justin Roberts, associate professor of geometry and topology at UCSD, served as guest speaker, and delighted the assembled students with a lively explanation of the mathematics involved in knot theory.
Arnold had high praise for all the participants.
“Mathematical literacy is fundamental to a full
understanding of our world and the forces which shape
it,” he said. “Each of the contestants
in the UCSD High School Math Contest, therefore, is
among the very brightest of our students, with a powerful
advantage as he or she prepares to enter college.”
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