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The Second Annual BEAM Los Angeles Math Competition
Kenny, Mayisa, and Adib were the top three individual competitors. Adib answered 17 of 18 questions correctly in the individual round!
On Saturday, 60 middle schoolers and their coaches joined BEAM for the second ever BEAM Los Angeles Math Competition. Of these, fully half (30 students!) attended BEAM 6 last summer.
The competition featured an Individual Round and a Team Round along with time to share solutions and an awards ceremony. Awards were given to the top three individuals, the top three teams, and the top school overall (based on how their multiple teams did).
Want a feel for the competition? Here’s a question that stumped students during the team round:
What is the biggest number which can be evenly divided by 12 with no remainder that you can make by using each of the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 at most once?
Students clearly loved the event! Here is some of their feedback:
We’d like to thank 9 Dots who generously donated the space for the competition; thanks so much!
Thanks also to all the students and staff of Alliance Richard Merkin Middle School, Berendo Middle School, Clinton Middle School, Equitas Academy #2, Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA), Rise Kohyang Middle School, Synergy Kinetic Academy, UCLA Community School, and Virgil Middle School who joined us on Saturday! We hope you had as much fun as the BEAM staff did in organizing this event.
Missed out? Here are some of our favorite images from the event!
Last year, BEAM held one math competition for 37 students. This year, we will be holding two and we can’t wait to see how many students show up for our spring competition! See you then!
AMC 8 Results
As you may recall, students took the AMC 8 contest back in November, and we wanted to report on how they did!
The AMC 8 is a 25 question contest, and it's quite challenging. This year, 108,295 students nationwide took the contest. The median (middle) student scored 9 -- just over a third of the questions answered correctly! To score in the top 25% percentile, students had to score at least 12. Only 90 students across the world got a perfect score.
Of the 11 BEAM students who took the contest, seven scored above 9 questions correct, putting them above the nationwide average. Good work, everyone! We are particularly impressed by Agata, whose score of 20 puts her the top 5% nationwide, and one question away from making the honor roll. BEAM is sure this a sign of future success yet to come.
MATHCOUNTS 2016
February was MATHCOUNTS month all over the country. BEAM sponsored teams at interested partner schools, making sure that students could participate without worrying about the cost of sending a team. In all, we paid for teams to attend the competitions in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
We want to draw particular attention to 8th grader Kaya Moore who received an honorable mention at the Bronx MATHCOUNTS tournament. Last week, Kaya found out that he will be attending the Bronx High School of Science next year. Nice work, Kaya!
AMC 8 Results
As you may recall, students took the AMC 8 contest back in November, and we wanted to report on how they did!
The AMC 8 is a 25 question contest, and it's quite challenging. This year, 149,277 students nationwide took the contest. The median (middle) student scored 8 -- less than a third of the questions answered correctly! To score in the top 25% percentile, students had to score at least 11. Only 90 students across the world got a perfect score.
Of the 12 students who took the contest, 9 scored above 8 questions correct, putting them above the nationwide average. Good work, everyone! We are particularly impressed by Ahmed, whose score of 13 puts him the top quartile nationwide. BEAM is sure this a sign of future success yet to come.
Saturday Office Hours
Every Thursday and one weekend a month, BEAM hosts "Office Hours". Just as in college, students can bring anything they're working on and receive help or advice from staff and volunteers.
Here's a list of things we worked on this weekend at Office Hours:
- Ayinde helped students prepare to take the SCAT next weekend, the first step to attending summer programs at the Center for Talented Youth (CTY)
- Amy helped Jahleel with Algebra 1
- Lynn helped Veronica with 8th grade math homework
- Ryan helped DeVaune with Geometry
- Dan led the monthly Math Team meeting, with the 8th graders preparing for MATHCOUNTS
Students also had time to take a break and eat a snack with friends.
By the time BEAM students get to college, they will be in the habit of seeking out help as needed!
BEAM Students Participate in the AMC 8
BEAM students take the AMC 8 and Ezelle uses her summer knowledge to solve her favorite problem.
On Tuesday, November 18, BEAM students (and thousands of 8th graders across the country) participated in the AMC 8. Taken by the strongest 8th grade mathematicians nationwide, the AMC 8 is both challenging and fun.
The AMC 8 is 25 multiple-choice questions, administered over 40 minutes. When the contest ended, students got to request solutions to the problems they didn't understand, making sure that the day was a learning opportunity as well! Most of the solutions were presented by Lynn, our Director of Programs, but Ezelle (an 8th grader) practically jumped out of her seat when it was time to discuss problem #18. Here's the problem she was so excited to solve:
Here's how Ezelle solved it:
- You know the top row has to grow 24 over 4 terms, so each number must be 6 more than the prior number. That gives you 1, 7, 13, 19, 25.
- You know the bottom row has to grow by 64 over 4 terms, so each number must be 16 more than the prior number. That gives you 17, 33, 49, 65, 81.
- Now, to get to X, you only have solve the middle column.
- You know the middle column has to grow from 13 to 49, which is 36 over 4 terms, so each number must be 9 more than the number above. That gives you 13, 22, 31, 40, 49.
- X is in the middle square of the middle column, so X must be 31.
When asked how she figured it out, Ezelle credited a favorite class from last summer, Cory's class titled "Integer Sequences", for teaching her how to think about sequences and series. Nice work, Ezelle! (And a hat tip to Cory, as well!)
Ezelle with her finished work.
You can find the full list of 2015 questions and solutions here. We promise more updates when we get students results back!
