High school students from all around Southern California competed Saturday in the eighth annual Math Day at The Beach, held in the University Student Union (USU) Ballroom.
The event, hosted by the department of mathematics and statistics, featured 30 high schools from Irvine to Santa Barbara that competed in various problem-solving mathematic simulations.
“They [the department of mathematics and statistics] are targeting high school students so they can continue math educations beyond high school,” said mathematics graduate student Ji Hee Kim.
The event not only gave students the opportunity to improve their mathematical skills, but prepared them for college. Some volunteers and undergraduate students competed in Math Day at The Beach when they were in high school and got recruited to attend Cal State Long Beach.
“We [the department] try to recruit students and have them excel in problem solving,” said M. Tip Phaovivul, president of the Mathematics and Statistics Association here at CSULB. Phaovivul competed in Math Day at The Beach when he was in high school and now is an undergraduate student at CSULB.
Typically, this event has been held in The Walter Pyramid, but due to the flood of participation from different high schools, the department needed to move into a bigger venue, such as the USU Ballroom.
“This [event] has always been held at The Pointe,” said Robert Mena, chairman of the department of mathematics and statistics. “We [the department] had to turn down five high schools last year because there were too many students.”
The event started off with two rounds of individual exams in which each high school student engaged in problem-solving activities. Soon after, the 30-minute team exams began.
“People don’t think of math as a cooperative activity, but you have to have cooperation to win the team round,” Mena said. “The students have to talk strategy on how to solve problems.”
After lunch, guest speaker Olga Radko, a mathematics professor at UCLA, spoke about the mathematics of musical scales. The lightning speed face-off round then took place where two students competed for the title of the champion by answering difficult mathematical equations before their opponent did.
Once all the intense problem-solving activities were done, the points were tallied and the trophies and medals were given to the best schools and highest scoring individuals.
For the second year in a row, North Hollywood High School won first place, receiving the pyramid-shaped trophy. Tedrick Leung, a senior at North Hollywood High School, was the highest scoring individual of the 185 other students.
The students who did not win a medal or trophy did not walk away empty-handed. Calculators were passed out as door prizes and each student received a book.
“[Math Day] is fun because we go to different parks to practice and we get free stuff,” said senior Yoland Ma from Mark Keppel High School.
