One thing that has pleased me a great deal over the past year is the number of teachers — mostly math teachers — who have enrolled their children in MIST Academy.  This includes teachers in at least four different schools including at least one university professor and also at least two retired teachers.  All of them seem to be appreciative of the program and their word of mouth has led to several other students joining MIST Academy.

We have recently reached the critical mass of students that I believe is necessary in order to run the school in essentially the way I like it to be run, and also to create a new culture of learning among Alabama math students.  This allows me to downshift my attention to advertising in favor of activities that better benefit the school.  One of my plans includes a math library that I have been busy building in the corner of the school.  At present, this mostly serves to make it easy for me to find problems and ideas for classes.  My hope is that next year it allows me to open the school on some Saturdays to students who just want to sit down with a practice test or a good math book and read/work/play/learn.

I am also brainstorming ways to encourage more participation in MathCounts (we’re up to 13 schools in Birmingham, but 20-25 is a reasonable goal) and also the AMC exams.  Our new teacher, Sergey, is helping us reestablish Alabama ARML as well.

Take a look at this Freakonomics post.  Morris does a good job of digging a level deeper and then a level deeper into a statistical question (that we may or may not be concerned about).  Ever after several levels of “how do we cut the data?”, there is still need for yet more data splicing in order to answer a question like “which sex drives better on average?”

Far more complex is the problem of sorting out problems in the health care system.  The current debate is clearly headed in the wrong direction when we take for granted an assumption such as “American health care is inferior,” which I hear constantly on news programs and in print.  It’s just plain wrong.  I’ll explain why.

Every human being is at constant risk of death — even in the short term.  We drive.  We consume.  Our cellular structure is designed for constant change that can at any time result in cancer — even in perfectly healthy people.  We live in a world in which crimes and other dangers are always a risk.

Perhaps we could code risk factors into a person’s “risk DNA”.  Consider the following base pairs:

A = smoker
B = nonsmoker
C = obese
D = not obese
E = drives more than 10,000 miles per year
F = does not drive more than 10,000 miles per year
G = lives in a neighborhood with high homocide rates
H = does not live in a neighborhood with high homocide rates

This list can go on forever, and we can certainly associate specific numbers with all of these characteristics to refine the process, but this should be enough to make the point.  There are enough characteristics here to divide the world into 16 categories of people.

As it turns out, if you look at any one of these 16 categories such as BCFG, Americans in that category live longer than people in every other nation, or nearly every other nation.

“But how could that be?” you ask.  “Our life expectancies are shorter than in many nations.  That means their health care is better.”

Anyone who thinks this way has scarcely little understanding of dependent probability and Bayes’ Theorem.   This is not a surprise as few people study math to that point.  But it’s absolutely essential to understanding complex policy considerations and continuing to run a government that is sustainable and a net positive to the people it serves.

It happens that these 16 categories have very different life expectancies. A nation like Japan has a population that mostly fits into the low risk categories, whereas a nation like the U.S. has a much larger proportion of citizens in the high risk categories.  Yet, when a person moves from Japan to the U.S., their life expectancy goes up, not down, so long as they do not change their risk DNA.  This is true for people in every large nation on Earth.

Why?  Well, after we’ve factored out all these risk factors that are based on lifestyle and environment, what we are left with is…health care.  If people in essentially every risk category are better off in the U.S., can’t we safely assume that our system isn’t “a failure” even if we can agree that we need to reconsider some of the finer points of its operation, the way torts are handled, and the way it gets financed?

Insurance companies know all of this very well.  Unfortunately they’ve been beaten into a corner and anything they say will be dismissed with the straw man of the greedy rationing monster…ironically by people who are trying to take control of the rationing process itself.

In the end what you are left with as a citizen is your own mathematical sensibilities.

Dependent probability is one of the topics I teach repeatedly at all levels of probability that I teach beyond my Introductory A (sixth grade math team) class.  It is one of the few areas of mathematics that even very bright people often fail to learn in a way that allows them to apply it to every day life.  If I ever build an economics course for high school students, dependent probability and statistics and Bayes theorem will be a central theme.

The Hoover High School Math Team Tournament took place today with around 1000 students in attendance. The following is a summary of awards:

Pre-Algebra

Large Schools Individuals:

1st — *Charles Li, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 95)
2nd — *Kai He, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 90)
3rd — Sunny Chennupati, Liberty Middle School (Score: 90)
4th — *Peter Qiu, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 86)
5th — *Linlin Pan, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 82)
6th — Max Ward, Discovery Middle School (Score: 81)
7th — Tina Tian, Discovery Middle School (Score: 80)
8th — Danny Johns, Simmons Middle School (Score: 80)
9th — *Jeremy Chow, Simmons Middle School (Score: 77)
10th — *Yasanka Chalasani, Liberty Middle School (Score: 77)
11th — *Jason Liu, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 76)
12th — *Andrea Zhang, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 76)
13th — John Kwon, Drake Middle School (Score: 75)
14th — Jenny Shen, Discovery Middle School (Score: 74)
15th — Houston Wingo, Homewood Middle School (Score: 68)

Small School Individuals:

1st — Ilham Ali, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 90)
2nd — Nicholas Fillinger, Cullman Middle School (Score: 85)
3rd — Drake Hollingsworth, Cullman Middle School (Score: 81)
4th — Claire Lindsey, Cullman Middle School (Score: 75)
5th — *Molly McLeroy, Cullman Middle School (Score: 71)
6th — Jennifer Reaves, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 68)
7th — Ford Etheridge, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 65)
8th — Daniel Huang, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 62)
9th — Luke McCarley, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 55)
10th — Ben Ratliff, Cullman Middle School (Score: 54)
11th — Branch Hill, Cullman Middle School (Score: 52)
12th — Meagan Johnson, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 52)
13th — Ben Huser, Cullman Middle School (Score: 51)
14th — Brooke Golden, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 50)
15th — Savannah Rosson, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 50)

Pre-Algebra Team Awards

Large Schools:

1st place — Pizitz Middle School (Score: 425)
2nd place — Discovery Middle School (Score: 355)
3rd place — Simmons Middle School (Score: 308)
4th place — Homewood Middle School (Score: 279)
5th place — Liberty Middle School (Score: 268)

Small Schools:

1st place — Cullman Middle School (Score: 364)
2nd place — Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 341)
3rd place — Rock Quarry Middle School (Score: 154)
4th place — Brookwood Middle School (Score: 142)
5th place — Irondale Middle School (Score: 100)

Algebra I

Large School Individual Awards:

1st place — Ziqi Wang, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 95)
2nd place — *Jack Patton, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 90)
3rd place — *Xianming Li, Berry Middle School (Score: 85)
4th place — *Andrea Lin, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 85)
5th place — Wendi Lu, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 85)
6th place — *Jamie Zhang, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 85)
7th place — *Sophie Wu, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 81)
8th place — *Jimmy Liu, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 80)
9th place — Janice Wu, Simmons Middle School (Score: 78)
10th place — Aubrey Dennis, Bumpus Middle School (Score: 74)
11th place — *Siyin Han, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 70)
12th place — Cody Duan, Pizitz Middle School (Score: 70)
13th place — Jessica Pinkston, Oak Mountain Middle School (Score: 68)
14th place — Joey Crittenden, Homewood Middle School (Score: 65)
15th place — Stefanie Schoeneman, Berry Middle School (Score: 65)

Small Schools Individual Awards:

1st place — *Leigh Braswell, Cullman Middle School (Score: 95)
2nd place — Bryant Kelley, Cullman Middle School (Score: 81)
3rd place — Cristina Oanca, Cullman Middle School (Score: 72)
4th place — Caroline Johnson, Cullman Middle School (Score: 67)
5th place — Emily Phipps, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 59)
6th place — Jacob Davis, Cullman Middle School (Score: 59)
7th place — Peyton Wilhite, Cullman Middle School (Score: 58)
8th place — Lee Mattox, Cullman Middle School (Score: 57)
9th place — Jordan Baumgartner, Cullman Middle School (Score: 56)
10th place — Reid Ruggles, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 56)
11th place — Trevor McClanahan, Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 55)
12th place — Eric Leinert, Alabama School of Fine Arts (Score: 55)
13th place — Zach Holt, Cullman Middle School (Score: 48)
14th place — Aimee Forrester, Cullman Middle School (Score: 47)
15th place — Samuel Schafer, Muscle Schoals Middle School (Score: 46)

Algebra I Team Awards

Large Schools:

1st place — Pizitz Middle School (Score: 420)
2nd place — Berry Middle School (Score: 318)
3rd place — Homewood Middle School (Score: 281)
4th place — Bumpus Middle School (Score: 279)
5th place — Briarwood Christian (Score: 278)

Small Schools:

1st place — Cullman Middle School (Score: 375)
2nd place — Muscle Shoals Middle School (Score: 241)
3rd place — Alabama School of Fine Arts (Score: 216)
4th place — Boaz High School (Score: 115)
5th place — Rock Quarry Middle School (Score: 100)

Geometry Awards

Large School Individual Awards:

1st place — *Wendy Feng, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 72)
2nd place — Grant Smith, Homewood HS (Score: 69)
3rd place — Camden Cutright, Spain Park HS (Score: 59)
4th place — Rebecca Riley, Homewood HS (Score: 59)
5th place — Kevin Yang, Spain Park HS (Score: 58)
6th place — *Botong Ma, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 58)
7th place — *Sisi Zheng, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 56)
8th place — Amy Li, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 53)
9th place — Jacob Helf, Homewood HS (Score: 51)
10th place — Maryclai Nabors, Homewood HS (Score: 45)
11th place — Camille Ponseti, Homewood HS (Score: 41)
12th place — Allise Fortinberry, Homewood HS (Score: 41)
13th place — Drew Shroyer, Homewood HS (Score: 35)
14th place — Chris Atchison, Homewood HS (Score: 33)
15th place — *David Namkoong, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 33)

Small School Geometry Individuals:

1st place — Stephen Atwood, ASFA (Score: 95)
2nd place — *Aashka Patel, ASFA (Score: 62)
3rd place — *Zhichun Li, ASFA (Score: 58)
4th place — Jefferson Zou, ASFA (Score: 55)
5th place — Rebecca Nation, ASFA (Score: 52)
6th place — *Jonathan Hurowitz, ASFA (Score: 50)
7th place — Noel Cervantes, Albertville HS (Score: 49)
8th place — Karan Jani, ASFA (Score: 48)
9th place — Luke Yordy, Muscle Shoals HS (Score: 44)
10th place — Thomas Parrish, Douglas HS (Score: 41)
11th place — Allie Weir, Cullman HS (Score: 40)
12th place — John Weeks, Cullman HS (Score: 40)
13th place — Ryan Dolin, Boaz HS (Score:36)
14th place — Andrew Long, Albertville HS (Score:36)
15th place — Enrico Camata, ASFA (Score: 36)

Geometry Team Awards

Large Schools:

1st place — Vestavia Hills High School (Score: 272)
2nd place — Homewood High School (Score: 260)
3rd place — Spain Park High School (Score: 216)
4th place — Oak Mountain High School (Score: 117)
5th place — Briarwood Christian (Score: 89)

Small Schools:

1st place — Alabama School of Fine Arts (Score: 306)
2nd place — Cullman High School (Score: 175)
3rd place — Albertville High School (Score: 163)
4th place — Muscle Shoals High School (Score: 138)
5th place — Jefferson County IB School (Score: 119)

Algebra II Awards

Large School Individual Awards:

1st place — Jerry Hsu, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 61)
2nd place — Forrest Gamble, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 42)
3rd place — Emily McDuff, Homewood HS (Score: 40)
4th place — Mason McGuyer, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 38)
5th place — Eric Nelson, Thompson HS (Score: 35)
6th place — Daniel Brown, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 34)
7th place — Philip Wolfe, Grissom HS (Score: 34)
8th place — Devin Valenza, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 30)
9th place — Carly Galbraith, Homewood HS (Score: 29)
10th place — Helen Caldwell, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 29)
11th place — Jiyun Choi, Grissom HS (Score: 28)
12th place — William Dykes, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 27)
13th place — Cassie Jian, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 27)
14th place — Dylan Westfall, Homewood HS (Score: 26)
15th place — Stuart Lang, Spain Park HS (Score: 26)

Small Schools:

1st place — *Sina Monfared, ASFA (Score: 55)
2nd place — Devin Sun, ASFA (Score: 49)
3rd place — Sophie Vogt, ASFA (Score: 42)
4th place — Julian Contreras, JCIB (Score: 38)
5th place — *Josh Oanca, Cullman HS (Score: 34)
6th place — Eric Thim, JCIB (Score: 32)
7th place — Andy Crowder, Cullman HS (Score: 31)
8th place — Josh Bell, Cullman HS (Score: 29)
9th place — Steven Gardner, ASFA (Score: 28)
10th place — Dustin Johnston, Albertville HS (Score: 27)
11th place — Tanner Jones, Albertville HS (Score: 27)
12th place — Josh Feist, ASFA (Score: 26)
13th place — Sam Crowder, Cullman HS (Score: 26)
14th place — Stats Hogeland, Cullman HS (Score: 25)
15th place — Nathan Spence, Albertville HS (Score: 22)

Algebra II Team Awards

Large Schools:

1st place — Vestavia Hills High School (Score: 188)
2nd place — Homewood High School (Score: 150)
3rd place — Oak Mountain High School (Score: 131)
4th place — Grissom High School (Score: 121)
5th place — Spain Park High School (Score: 104)

Small Schools:

1st place — Alabama School of Fine Arts (Score: 201)
2nd place — Cullman High School (Score: 134)
3rd place — Jefferson County IB School (Score: 113)
4th place — Albertville High School (Score: 105)
5th place — Boaz High School (Score: 52)

Comprehensive Division Results

Large School Individuals:

1st place — Lucy Xie, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 69)
2nd place — Kyle Julian, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 67)
3rd place — Owen Scott, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 56)
4th place — *Suyoung Jang, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 55)
5th place — Luka Mernik, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 47)
6th place — Kenneth Liu, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 47)
7th place — Nitish Aggarwal, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 47)
8th place — Ricky Goncalves, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 46)
9th place — Johnny Wei, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 45)
10th place — Burke Smith, Homewood HS (Score: 43)
11th place — Alan Chou, Grissom HS (Score: 43)
12th place — James Sartor, Grissom HS (Score: 42)
13th place — Wendy Zhao, Vestavia Hills HS (Score: 41)
14th place — Jimmy Nakamura, Homewood HS (Score: 41)
15th place — Ameen Barghi, Oak Mountain HS (Score: 40)

Small Schools Individuals:

1st place — Deep Amin, Fort Payne HS (Score: 40)
2nd place — Kenneth Gray, JCIB (Score: 39)
3rd place — Amanda Alldredge, Albertville HS (Score: 38)
4th place — Zac Adams, JCIB (Score: 35)
5th place — Robert Cole, Cullman HS (Score: 31)
6th place — Usama Abbasi, ASFA (Score: 31)
7th place — AJ Pollard, Albertville HS (Score: 30)
8th place — Eli Pondertwardy, Albertville HS (Score: 30)
9th place — Maydda Qureshi, ASFA (Score: 29)
10th place — Austin Hyde, JCIB (Score: 29)
11th place — Hoby Ashley, Fort Payne HS (Score: 28)
12th place — Chris Roberts, Athens HS (Score: 27)
13th place — Alex Holt, Athens HS (Score: 26)
14th place — Logan Jolley, Albertville HS (Score: 25)
15th place — Trey Sides, JCIB (Score: 24)

Comprehensive Division Team Awards:

Large Schools:

1st place — Vestavia Hills High School (Score: 277)
2nd place — Grissom High School (Score: 197)
3rd place — Homewood High School (Score: 189)
4th place — Oak Mountain High School (Score: 129)
5th place — Briarwood Christian (Score: 105)

Small Schools:

1st place — Jefferson County IB School (Score: 140)
2nd place — Alabama School of Fine Arts (Score: 124)
3rd place — Albertville High School (Score: 123)
4th place — Fort Payne High School (Score: 118)
5th place — Cullman High School (Score: 99)

*Indicates a student who took a MIST Academy course in 2009 or 2010. Most of these students are currently enrolled.

The past month has been a good one for the Alabama School of Fine Arts math teams.  Last month ASFA won its first chapter MathCounts title.  Today at the Hoover High School Math Tournament, the ASFA Geometry and Algebra II/Trig teams were tops among schools in all divisions.  Many of ASFA’s high scorers were students competing one or even two grade levels ahead of themselves, including the top two individual students on the Algebra II team, Sina Monfared and Devin Sun.  This bodes well for the future of the ASFA math team.

I just found out that 8 of the top 10 students at Huntsville MathCounts were MIST Academy students.  We are very proud of this exceptional group:

1st — Bill Caraway (Challenger Middle School)
2nd — Asutosh Nanda (Challenger Middle School)
3rd — Animesh Mahapatra (Challenger Middle School)
4th — Sabrina Chen (Randolph School)
6th — Ryan Murphy (Randolph School)
8th — Hedley Myers (Randolph School)
9th — Meghna Katta (Randolph School)
10th — Robert Caraway (Challenger Middle School)

Challenger (1st place) and Randolph (2nd place) advanced to the state competition.  Next year Liberty Middle School looks like a contender, though Randolph may be the team to beat.

Bill Caraway won the Countdown Round, Sabrina Chen was the high scoring 7th grader, and Robert Caraway was the high scoring sixth grader at the event.

I love reading Richard Feynman’s books.  He is so engaging that I listen to his famous physics lectures on audio book when I’m working late at the school.  He clearly loves his craft, and that is inspirational.

Perhaps more importantly, Feynman wrote about how his passion was nurtured by his father.  Feynman’s father was a salesman, but loved science and valued science and talked with wonderment to his son Richard about science.  Richard Feynman was not the product of a father’s intense desire to beat science into his son.  Richard Feynman was the product of inspiration that led to tinkering that led to further curiosities that led to a naturally energetic mind.  Reading Feynman’s books, I never get the sense of a boy who worked himself to high stress to become a man.  Surely I can imagine him falling asleep, exhausted over a radio he was building or repairing as a child, but there is no indication that he needed any push — just the guidance of value that happened upon a boy with a high IQ.

Some people read parenting books.  For parents of bright kids, I recommend Feynman.  I’d start with this one.  Or this one.  Or even this one.  Yes, I recommend them for students as well.

This past Saturday I attended the awards ceremony at the Pizitiz Middle School math team tournament.  One thing I continued to notice is the rise of the Liberty Middle School math team.  Last year one of my sixth grade students and a friend of his from Liberty Middle School did quite well at the tournaments around Alabama, but they were sometimes the only students competing from their school.  This year they seem more often to be part of a whole team which has been quite successful.  Liberty Middle School won both the seventh and eighth grade divisions at Pizitz, and they have won many other high team awards throughout the year.  I am told that their coach sacrifices a lot to be with her team.

With the ASFA team winning Birmingham MathCounts, the Bumpus team on the rise, and Cullman having their best team ever, it seems that there is more math team going on at a high level than in the previous several years.

As I walked in to the gym at Pizitz prior to the awards ceremony I met the younger brother of an old friend of mine from high school.  Abe Kunin is now the coach of the Randolph School’s middle school math team.  If Randolph keeps him around I am sure that their math team will continue to flourish.  I don’t recall which awards their team won, but I do know that they won their division in seventh grade and had the top student (who is a sixth grader).

I look forward to state MathCounts to see if any of the good and improving teams around Alabama can give Challenger a run for their money.  More interesting might be what happens next year — there may be a half dozen teams around Alabama capable of winning Alabama MathCounts in 2011.

According to the AMC director, there were 4 perfect scores on the AMC 12 A and 5 perfect scores on the AMC 10 A.  I don’t know if this reflects only American students or the other students who take the exam around the world.

One of the AMC 10 perfect scorers is Pushkar Aggarwal who took classes with us here at MIST Academy for a year and a half up until recently when he moved to Maryland.  If this is correct, he is in very distinguished company this year.  This is even more impressive since he is an 8th grader.  If there were only 4 perfect scores on the AMC 10 A, it is likely that most of them were high school students.

Congratulations Pushkar!

It’s a shame that he won’t be competing for the Alabama MathCounts and ARML teams…

Last night I was wondering about the sharp increase in the difficulty of the AMC exams, so I took a look at the score distributions from last year’s AMC exams.  The AMC’s goal is to invite the top 1% of AMC 10 test takers to the AIME, the second level of competition, though a score of 120 or above always qualifies.  This meant that 3-4% of AMC 10 test takers qualified last year.  Had the cutoff simply been 1%, scores of 135+ and 144+ on the A and B exams would have qualified.  Had these scores represented the cutoff rather than 120, around a quarter of the middle school students who qualified would have done so.  In other words, it was much tougher for middle school students to qualify this year.  This was made worse by the fact that more 9th and 10th graders opted to take the AMC 10 this year instead of the AMC 12 for hopes of qualifying for the new Junior Math Olympiad, so achieving a score in the top 1% is even harder.  I suspect that the number of middle school qualifiers for the AIME will be only around 20% of what it was last year, which reflects what we saw this year at MIST Academy.  Even though we have a much deeper pool of talented middle school students, [I suspect that] we have fewer AIME qualifiers than we did last year, even though we will likely have more award winners overall.

I wonder how many USAMO qualifiers would not have made the 135/144 top 1% levels last year.  I suspect that there would have been some.  This makes me wonder if the AMC is making the right decision to narrow the pool of AIME test takers.

One thing that I have long believed is that many top students only reach their potential with AMC problems after they have qualified for the AIME and practiced more of those problems, and also that many do well on the AIME only after having qualified for the USAMO and practiced those problems.  This makes me think that it’s better to err on the side of more and not fewer qualifiers.  I know that this is costly and problematic in regards to the USAMO, but I suspect that the cost of administering the AIME is much smaller.

Earlier today I received an email from the parent of a student whose son took the AMC 10 at Auburn.  He said that many students walked out of the exam exclaiming that they would never do that again.  This may be another reason to prefer a higher percentage of AIME qualifiers and an AMC 10 exam that is not quite as hard as this year’s.  To be sure, I like the fact that the exams were harder — particularly toward the end of the test.  But part of the AMC’s goal as I understand it is to keep students and schools interested and motivated.

Of course, I criticize the AMC very lightly when at all because they are one of the very best math education organizations in existence, and I don’t expect them or anyone else to make decisions that I concur with 100% of the time.  The biggest problem is that top students who prepare for harder math problems have separated themselves substantially from everyone else in the American education system.  When I say that, I mean that the degree of separation has grown with the publication of AoPS books along with dedicated programs like MIST Academy.  In order for the AMC to target 1% of AMC 10 test takers, they must write exams so hard that even math students who have always earned A’s in math class at their government or even private schools get dizzy trying to solve problems after the very first page.

So, by solving the advanced math education problem for one subset of students, we’ve made the problem of motivating everyone else a little worse?  I could easily start a rant here about teachers unions, but I’d surely be wasting my time.

It’s math competition season, so I’ve been working 7 days a week for several weeks in a row now.  Tonight marks the first night since Sunday that I left the school before 11:30 PM for the night.  I have a lot to do, but it’s best to stay rested with classes starting this Sunday.

Chapter MathCounts has come and gone for my students.  I still don’t know all the Huntsville results, but I know that the top four students are all MIST Academy students, as are at least two others in the top 10, maybe more.  In Birmingham, 6 of the top 12 were MIST Academy students including the winners of the testing and Countdown.

The AMC exams have come and gone.  The tests were much harder than usual this year.  I prepared my students based on exams from previous years and so I thought we would have more qualifiers for the AIME this year.  It is much more difficult than ever before to be in the top 1% of test takers, which is a good thing.  I plan to rethink the way I structure my classes to help students who are most interested in attaining that goal achieve it.

I think that MIST Academy will have more AMC award winners this year than last year, even if the overall number of award winners nation-wide goes down.  But the number of MIST Academy award winners would have been much higher based on previous year’s tests.  The AMC might have noticed an increase in the number of very young students with extremely high scores and decided to include more AIME-level problems (mostly low level, but 24 on the AMC 10 A and 25 on the AMC 10 B were mid and upper mid level AIME-ish problems) to steepen the curve at the top of the scoring list.  The new Junior Olympiad might have also paved the way for a change in philosophy on the test.

Part of me wonders if potential IMO gold medalists might be left out qualification now that the standards are so high.  Would it be better to allow more students in to the AIME if more are qualified?  Is funding an issue?  I know of several IMO gold medalists who barely qualified for the USAMO in their time including Kiran Kedlaya who now writes Olympiad problems when he’s not busy with his duties at MIT.  Would he have passed the AMC 10 his sophomore year before he earned a gold medal at the IMO?  Probably…but possibly not.

Up until now I have worked very hard just to keep up with class writing.  But things are changing.  I hired a new teacher in Huntsville who is very talented — a former USAMO qualifier and member of the U.S. Physics Olympiad team.  There is less basic class writing that I need to do at this point.  These changes will allow me to do more for the most motivated students.  Next school year I will be able to do more for the students preparing for the AMC exams.  I have one idea in mind that will give these students a much better chance of developing their talents fully.

For two-and-a-half years now I’ve continually thought, “this is where really good things start to happen,” and I still feel that way.  I think this is what keeps me motivated to continually search for the right balance between work and play/exercise/rest.  Tonight I’m going to read, rest and play.