On Saturday, November 17th, 175 mathletes from across Indiana, ranging from 5th to 8th grade, descended upon Sycamore School to participate in the 9th annual Sycamore Math Invitational. The contest is modeled after the popular middle school math competition MATHCOUNTS.
In the 8th grade and under division, West Lafayette 8th grader Patrick Li was the overall champion with an outstanding score of 39. In second place was Sycamore 8th grade Grace Yang with a score of 36. In 3rd place was Brady Exoo from Terre Haute. Rounding out the top 10: 4th place Keven Hu, 5th Ray Li, 6th Canaan He, 7th Tanay Acharya (Sycamore), 8th Minnie Liang, 9th place Rachael Cai, 10th Akshay Guttikonda (Sycamore). Other Sycamore students recognized were Steven Sun (12th), Jonathan Yang (15th), Daniel Mukhin (16th) and earning Honorable Mention were Nikita Mukhin, Nelson You, Karl Wang, Alex Lu, Walker Gollapudi, and Michael Fryburg.
In the 6th grade and under division, Sycamore students took the top 4 spots. First place was Sam Rudavsky, 2nd place Avi Maun, 3rd place Emily Hackwelder, and 4th place Jason Shaye. Rounding out the top 10: 5th place Daniel Liu, 6th Jennifer Hu, 7th Sophie Liang (Sycamore), 8th David Jiang, 9th Justin Puno (Sycamore), and 10th Triston English (Sycamore) . Other Sycamore students recognized were Nate Liang (12th), Insia Zaidi (14th), and earning Honorable Mention were Kaitlyn Park, Owen Zhang, and Vidhatri Iyer.
The unique thing about the invitational is it is designed to be both a full-fledged math contest and an opportunity for the students to grow as problem solvers. After the testing portion, while waiting for results, Sycamore coaches Trent Tormoehlen and Bob Fischer review the problems with the students and have students demonstrate different techniques that can be used to arrive at the correct answer.