Math Circle Regulars Continue to Dominate Texas MATHCOUNTS

In yet another Metroplex area MATHCOUNTS chapter competition, regular Metroplex Math Circle attendees claimed the highest awards.  In the latest case, the first place prize in the Mid-Cities Chapter competition was won by 7th grader, Alex Krutko, whose family has been attending both Metroplex Math Circle and Mid-Cities Math Circle regularly.  Alex and his brother are also planning to take advantage of more of Dr. Andreescu’s instruction by attending his AwesomeMath camp this summer.

Alex lead his Colleyville Middle School team to a first prize finish in this highly competitive chapter.  Alex and his team will meet up at the state competition with their friends from Math Circle who won the Preston Trail chapter competition, Jeffrey Huang and Niranjan Balachandar.  We wish them all luck as they encounter the very talented teams coached by Jeff Boyd in the Sugarland area next month in Austin.

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Algebraic Inequality Slides

By popular demand here are the slides from Radu Sorici’s excellent lecture on Algebraic Inequalities.  This was great preparation for those students taking the AMC 10 and 12 test today.  Best of luck to everyone.

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Dr. Branislav Kisačanin – Geometry of Triangles

 

This Saturday, February 26th Dr. Kisačanin will return for another of his fantastic lectures.  Anyone preparing for the AMC, AIME or USAMO should plan to attend.  Triangles factor into almost every math contest in addition to being endlessly fascinating objects in themselves.  Here is Dr. Kisačanin’s description of the session with links to resources:

In this talk about geometry of triangles we will see two different proofs of Stewart’s theorem, derive formulas for important cevians, and solve several interesting geometric problems. We will also look at other important points in triangles (Fermat point, centers of excircles, …) and look at the Euler line, the nine-point circle, and related problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart%27s_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat_point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excircle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_point_circle

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Watson and Math Circle

Many of us have been following the extraordinary events of last week as the IBM computer, Watson, defeated the two greatest human Jeopardy champions in three matches.  This milestone in artificial intelligence will go down in history along with Deep Blue’s defeat of Garry Kasparov in chess over a decade ago.

It took a decade to make the leap from dominating chess to a game like Jeopardy because of the challenges in understanding the ambiguity of human language.  The field focused on overcoming these challenges is called Natural Language Processing and it is an area of focus for UT Dallas and of several area companies.

Natural Language Processing in turn is closely related to Computational Linguistics.  Dr. Vincent Ng has presented to the Metroplex Math Circle before on Statistical Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics.  UT Dallas and Dr. Ng also host the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) which is used to select the team that represents the US at the International Linguistics Olympiad.

The winners of these contests are often those who do well in math problem solving contests and attend programs like the Metroplex Math Circle.  So if you would like to be a part of the next exciting milestone in artificial intelligence, come to Metroplex Math Circle and learn the skills that will help you “serve our computer overlords.”  🙂

 

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AMC 10 / 12 B Location Announced

For those of you planning to take the AMC 10 or 12 B at UT Dallas this year, Dr. Andreescu has announced that it will be in the Conference Center in room 1.102.  If you are familiar with the campus you will note that the Conference Center is just across Rutford from the building where Metroplex Math Circle is usually held.  For those of you who need directions, this link will show you the Conference Center and nearby parking:

http://www.utdallas.edu/maps/

This room was chosen due to the large number of students who have already signed up.  If you would like to take the test at UTD please contact Dr. Andreescu to insure that you have a test reserved for you.

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Math Circle Regulars Dominate Chapter MATHCOUNTS

Many Metroplex Math Circle students participated in today’s Preston Trails Chapter MATHCOUNTS competition.  But we are particularly proud of the performance by two of our most regular attendees, Niranjan Balachandar and Jeffrey Huang.  Both were selected to participate in the high pressure countdown round by scoring in the top 10 on the written portions of the contest.  As we later found out, Niranjan scored #1 and Jeffrey scored #2 on the written tests.

Both Niranjan and Jeffrey dominated their countdown rounds and came to face each other in the final.  Each won points answering long before the question had been read.  In the end Jeffrey won the last point and became the winner of the countdown round!

Both Niranjan and Jeffrey will now go to the state competition on the Rice and Frankford Middle School teams.  Best of luck to them both in Austin!

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AMC 10 and 12 B Information

As students take the AMC 10 and 12 A today I wanted to post information on Texas universities offering the B version of the test on February 23rd.  Please contact the site coordinators directly.  If you are looking for a site in another state they are listed by the AMC at this site.

Blinn College

902 College Ave.
Brenham, TX 77833

David Fleeger
david.fleeger@blinn.edu
979-830-4436

4:00pm
Main Conference Room of the Student Center

Concordia University

11400 Concordia University Drive
Austin, TX 78726-1887

John Frederic
freddy_dx@yahoo.com
512-313-3000

Offering both the 10/12 A and the 10/12 B testing dates.

University of Texas at Austin

Dept. of Mathematics
Austin, TX 78712-0257

Allison Moore
smmg@math.utexas.edu
512-471-7711

University of Texas at Brownsville

80 Fort Brown
Brownsville, TX 78520

Jerzy Mogilski
jerzy.mogilski@utb.edu
956-882-6636

University of Texas at Dallas

Science & Math Dept.
2601 N. Floyd Rd. FN33
Richardson, TX 75083

Titu Andreescu
tandreescu@gmail.com
972-883-2437

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