By Maggie Kane, Staff Writer
The Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition trophy, which Kalamazoo Colle graced on 2011 and hopes to retain this year.
By Maggie Kane, Staff Writer
Hoping to defend their first-place title, several teams of Kalamazoo College students traveled to Calvin College on Saturday to compete in the Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition.
Sophomore Umang Varma, a member of last year’s winning team, said the College has had a strong showing in this year’s competitions.
“K always has had a few teams do well,” he said. “I feel as though we’ll definitely, hopefully have a reasonably good result and maybe we’ll even win this year.”Sophomore Umang Varma, a member of last year’s winning team, said the College has had a strong showing in this year’s competitions.
Unlike other schools, Kalamazoo College does not practice before competitions because of conflicts with students’ schedules, said Professor of Mathematics Dr. John Fink.
“It’s like pickup softball, or pickup soccer,” said Fink. “It’s people who like to play with recreational mathematics.”
“Most of us know a little bit, discuss a few things and then wing it in some way,” said Varma.
The competition lasts three hours. After registering, teams receive a copy of the exam, an envelope and scratch paper. The exam has 10 questions.
Fink said the questions “involve all branches of mathematics that undergraduates would have to see.”
“Most problems involve cleverness, very little knowledge,” said Fink.
Varma said that any nervousness evaporates quickly as competitors turn their attention to the exam. He and his teammates usually do an initial scan of the exam before dividing up the easier questions. The harder questions, said Varma, usually require at least two people to tackle.
“By the end of about two hours you’re like ‘I don’t really know what else I can do,’” Varma said. “Sometimes in the last 10 minutes you find a solution.”
The math department will not know the results of the competition for several weeks. The hosts at Calvin College must first send all of the exams to the creator of the test. The author and his team will then score each copy and tabulate the results.
“We kind of forget about it,” said Varma. The math department announced last year’s results at a weekly math and physics tea. “We did not expect to win at all, so it came as a big shock,” Varma said.
