Mathletes Test Their Numerical Wills
Students represent Christ School, themselves in competitions
Math plus competition equals fun at Christ School.
Math instructor Bryan Martin is always on the lookout for Type A personalities who are numerically inclined. He calls them Mathletes.
The gist of it is this. Several times every year, Greenies are given the chance to represent themselves or the school in competitions, with the most recent being last month. The idea for Mathletes came from Coleman Davis '18, one of three National Merit Semifinalists in the Class of 2018.
"This is our third year of doing it. It's a good outlet for anyone who is interested in math," Martin said. "It's very informal. We've talked about meeting before as a group, but everyone's schedules are so busy."
Martin formed Christ School's Mathletes for a November modeling competition by asking for volunteers during Assembly. Coleman stepped up, as did William David '21, Bronson Gatts '18, Drew Hamilton '18, Michael Wang '19, Tommy Li '21, and Eric Zhou '19. The Mathletes split into two teams, and had 36 hours to solve a problem. This year's problem was estimating the flight paths of drones.
Martin said the two teams are waiting to hear back the results. Christ School received the highest possible rating (meritorious) two years ago, which allows a school to advance on to international competition. Martin said the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics is the only other statewide school he knows of that offers the modeling competition, which is presented by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications.
Christ School will host a 25-question, 75-minute individual American Mathematics Competition in February. Martin is expecting about 20 Christ School students to participate. Finally, UNC Asheville will stage a computer programming competition for high schools on April 8, 2018.
