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The Math Zoom Academy and the American Mathematical Society co-sponsored "Who Wants to Be a Mathematician" and Southern California Mathematical Olympiad - two math contests with Southern California high school students competing for cash and prizes. The event took place on December 6, 2008 at California State University Fullerton in the Titan Student Union. WWTBAM questions covered pre-calculus topics (including logic and history of mathematics). The top prize in the game is $2000.
Ten students were chosen based on their scores on a qualifying test given one month prior to the event, with no more than one student from any one school, to participate in Who Wants to be a Mathematician final contest on December 6, 2008.
Forty top scorers in the qualifying test, besides the ten chosen for WWTBAM, are selected to participate in the Southern California Math Olympiad - SCMO, which is a dynamic and entertaining contest.
Before the math contests, a math talk (aimed at high school students) was given at 10:00am by Dr. Paul Dreyer of the RAND Corporation. The title of the talk: "Six degrees of graph theory: Kevin Bacon, Paul Erdös, William McKinley and me". Dr. Dreyer does a wonderful job of communicating to students his enthusiasm for mathematics. Dr. Dreyer is also a Math Zoom instructor.
Admission was free to both the contests and talk. Over 150 students, parents, teachers, and friends participated in the event.
Final Participants for Who Wants to be a Mathematician:
- George Xing: Winner of $3000 . Rebecca Jacobs: 2nd Place.
- Raku Watari, Stephen Yoo, Kevin Yin, Ricky Demer, David Ke, Oleksandr Stubailo, Hansen Han, Matthew Alexander
Final Participants for Southern California Mathematical Olympiad:
- Green Team: The Winning Team: 12 Points, won Tie Breaker. Benjamin Cosman, David Yang, Jocelyn Tang, Jason Jong, Tuan Le, Wendy Hsu, Michael Murata, Jan Wimmer
- Yellow Team: 2nd Place: 12 Points. Richard Zhang, Devin Corr-Robinett, Stephanie Tai, Bryan Bocong Chen, Ben Barard, Zongwei Li, Christopher Underhill, Ryan Yoo
- Blue Team: 8 Points. Johnny Li, Brandon Sim, Chelsey Qiaoshu Lin, Derek Ouyang, Katharine Daly, Gregory Simonian, Hugh Bahe, Sean Wang
- Red Team: 5 Points. Dai Yang, Edward Woo, Jong Wook Kim, Su-Hwa Yu, Richard Cho, Eba Kim, Riffany Chen, Sonam Dhiman, Michael V. Loginov
AMS website story about this event
Format of the Southern California Math Olympiad:
A set of math problems will be given to all the teams. Members in each team collaborate on the problem, and the first team that correctly answers a question will "own" that question. Someone in a team raises his or her hand in order to answer a question, and they will be called on in a predefined order. Each team has two chances to answer each question that has not been "owned". At the end (when either all math questions are owned or the hour is up), the team that "owns" the largest number of questions wins the contest.
Note: The top 40 scorers on the enclosed qualifying test (excluding the 8 contestants selected for the WWTBAM) are eligible to participate in this team contest. The names of the top 40 scorers and the team assignments will be announced on the Math Zoom website and through email two weeks before the event. The contestants are required to confirm their attendance one week before the event. If anyone selected is not able to attend, the spot will be given to alternatives.
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