Washburn hosted the Kansas Mathematical Association of America Section Meeting March 22- 23 in Morgan Hall. Part of the section meeting was the collegiate math competition, where participants had to solve 10 question papers in the course of three hours.
Scott Thuong, associate professor of math at Pittsburg State University, has been helping in these competitions since 2017. He and his colleague, Dionyssis Mantzavinos, worked on writing the questions and preparing solutions for this year.
“It is meant to be challenging, …they are questions that should take ingenuity and creativity to solve,” Thuong said. “It is a team based competition; usually, students work very hard to prepare for this test but, again, the questions are higher level than you would find in a classroom.”
There were 12 teams in the competition, each team from different universities around Kansas. The informational meeting for the competition was held in Morgan 202 where the participants were given the information about the event and eventually the question sheet at the end.
Thoung talks about how inclusive the competition is, allowing students from any major to participate.
“Students don’t have to be math major —in fact one of the students in my team is a computer major,” Thuong said. “So, really any students that have taken a good amount of math can compete.”
The competition started at 11 a.m. The team members were assigned to different rooms in Morgan where they got three hours to solve the 10 problem questions.
“Usually what I think to prepare, … students will work all exams,” Thuong said. “Other states have math competitions, sometimes students will work through those practice tests and so on.”
During the competition, there were ongoing paper sessions among the faculty members who gave presentations about various fields of mathematics. Gaspar Porta, associate professor of mathematics, explains the importance of these conference meetings.
“It is an opportunity for the mathematics community of Kansas to have face to face time,” Porta said. “Collaboration is almost ubiquitous in mathematics…so these opportunities to meet face to face frequently enhance mathematical research and mathematical progress and that’s something that has always been the case and continues to be the case.”
The winners were announced at 1:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union. The University of Kansas team No. 1 won first place followed by Kansas State University’s team No. 1.
Edited by Aja Carter and Jeremy Ford
