Many popular questions I have frequently heard are “What is math even used for?” or “Will I ever use math in my everyday life?” Naturally, it is difficult to imagine how the infinite number of proofs/theorems in geometry and the linear equations in algebra are used daily, especially outside of the classroom.

Shopping and money management are the most common, math-heavy tasks. The skill of budgeting, counting change, discounts, sales taxes, and overall costs of items being purchased completely involves math. Although it may sound like a simple addition and subtraction activity, mathematics appears in all aspects of our lives.

Simply splitting a slice of cake with a sibling involves math too! Even though we might not realize it, trying to ensure that the cake is cut precisely in half uses math.

Sports, a physical activity many people are passionate about, involve more complex mathematics. From a team player to a cheering fan in the crowd, math calculates the probabilities of winning, strategizing, and scoring. Geometry, the study of shapes, angles, and lines, directly influences the efficiency of a sports game, from the time-effective way a softball player runs the bases to a golfer’s swing mechanics and ball trajectory. Many people also engage in other healthy activities like walking in the park or weightlifting to get stronger. Calculating the number of reps, laps, minutes, and weight measurements also utilizes math.

Event planning is an enjoyable and math-requiring task. A seemingly straightforward plan for a birthday party involves the difficulty of deciding the number of guests, probability of guests accepting the invite, the amount of food per guest, location and space utilization, and budgeting the cost of supplies for the event. 

More examples include managing time to guarantee a productive Saturday, measuring salt to add to a bowl of soup, watering roses in a garden, planning a week-long trip to Italy, playing music, and starting a business. The list could go on forever! Mathematics appears in many forms, making crucial decisions to ensure success in our everyday lives.

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I was given the opportunity to experience the Berkeley Math Tournament (BMT) which turned out to be one of the most inspiring and extraordinary experiences in my math journey so far. BMT is a UC Berkeley student-led organization that has a mission to spread the love of math and entertain students with world-applicable problems to solve. As part of my high school’s math team, this was my first BMT competition ever. There were six members in my team across 9th, 10th and 11th grades. My school had two teams at BMT, and some other schools had six to eight teams. 

On a foggy and slightly windy morning on Saturday (11/2/2024), I arrived at 8AM to the spectacular campus of UC Berkeley. I surprisingly found my way into the Dwinelle Hall area but because the competition is popular, over 1,000 students across 203 teams were also scrambling to find their teammates and schedules. After fifteen minutes of texting anxiously to multiple teammates, I united with the five other students from my school team. After our confusions about registration were resolved, we headed over to the Pauley Ballroom for the first round, the Power Round. As a proof-based team-round for ninety minutes, there was a great amount of variety in the questions for everyone’s strengths to be put to use. I was also inspired by the problem-solving strategies that varied throughout the team. 

Afterwards, I immediately went to a different location for my two, individual focus tests of algebra and geometry. I nervously walked into Room 145 of Dwinelle Hall as the fifty students inside stared at me the moment I stepped in. I sat down next to a girl who met me with friendly looks and the most relatable thoughts about the tests we were taking. Both focus tests were exciting, and I felt proud of myself after solving some of the challenging problems. During the break between the focus tests, I talked to some of the other students near me, which taught me that math competitions are not only to accurately solve all of the problems, but also to engage in meaningful conversations with new people, especially those who share common interests in math.

After happily completing both focus tests even though they started later than intended, I ran over to the restaurant where the rest of my teammates were having lunch. Once I reached the restaurant, my teammates and I talked about our strategies for the next round that we practiced for the day before. We lost track of time but rushed back to the Pauley Ballroom to make it just in the nick of time. However, there was no need to eat and speed-walk at the same time because the round started one hour later than it was supposed to! During the delay, I noticed one of the most memorable and noteworthy moments of the entire experience: together, in one room, young mathematicians similar to me shared the same love for math as I did. The Guts round, a 75-minute team round with nine sets of three problems began. My team and I quickly but thoughtfully solved the first few sets of problems as the difficulty increased faster than I expected. In the end, I was told that we did better than the math team last year which was a fulfilling statement. Overall, the eventful day was a worthy experience, and I can’t wait for the next BMT competition and many other math events to come. 

-Mihika

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I got one of the most valuable opportunities to form a math club at my middle school to encourage and motivate girls to explore STEM and participate in math competitions. To do this, I invited four female mathematicians from Stanford and UC Berkeley as guest speakers to share words of advice and life lessons from their careers and how they got interested in math being female.

The speakers who taught so much about math from a different perspective were:

Dr. Eugenia Malinnikova: a mathematics professor at Stanford University. Dr. Malinnikova went to Princeton prior to becoming a professor where she was a von Neumann fellow during 2018-2019. She also won the Clay Research Award in 2017. Dr. Malinnikova earned her Ph.D. in 1999 from St. Petersburg State University. She researches harmonic analysis, elliptic PDE, and potential theory. 

Dr. Alice Cortinovis: a tenure-track researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pisa, Italy. Dr. Cortinovis received a Ph.D. from EPFL, Switzerland. She primarily does research on numerical linear algebra.

Dr. Catherine Cannizzo: a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley. Dr. Cannizzo received a Ph.D. in 2019 from UC Berkeley and a bachelor’s and master’s in mathematics from the University of Oxford. She does research in the field of geometry.

Dr. Krutika Tawri: a professor of math at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on deterministic and stochastic nonlinear Partial Differential Equations arising from fluid dynamics, geophysics, and material science. Dr. Tawri received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University.

All four amazing professors taught me the most priceless life lessons I want to share.  

Dr. Malinnikova wisely stated, “There are very many different ways to enjoy mathematics.” I learned that mathematics can be enjoyed through competitions, making origami figures, pushing oneself to solve problems for fun, etc. She also explained, “There is so much development in the world in science, technology, and mathematics because we all think differently. We need people with different minds, backgrounds, and experiences to be successful.” This quote made me wonder if we all thought/acted/experienced everything the same, what would the world be like? Certainly not the thriving societies we live in today. 

Dr. Cortinovis also taught me a valuable lesson, “If a math competition goes well, that’s great! If it doesn’t, who cares? So, participate because you have nothing to lose.” I have never forgotten her quote because it applies to everyday life, such as school, work, and sports. I learned that if someone continues trying and never gives up, good results will follow. The effort counts more than the number of questions correctly answered. 

“I actually met a lot of interesting people from math competitions. Like… I met my best friend,” Dr. Cortinovis explained. At this point, I felt that mathematics has it all: finding loved ones, sharing interests, and having lots of fun. 

Dr. Tawri talked about the gender gap in mathematics, saying, “Math is about problem-solving and logical reasoning. It sees no gender, it sees no race. And that’s why I think it’s also extremely important to encourage young female mathematicians to join the community.” It just goes to show that although gender and race gaps may be discouraging, math is for everyone. 

“Show the girls that math is not boring; it’s really fun. No matter what field you are in, you are going to end up using math in one form or the other,” Dr. Tawri explained. I learned that math may be portrayed as “tedious” or extremely frustrating but if you give it a chance, it can become one’s favorite hobby and part of life like it is for me.

“The field is really formed by the people doing it. And the more girls and gender-expansive youth doing math, the better the field becomes.” Dr. Cannizzo stated one of the most real facts is that the math field needs more diversity and the mathematicians are the ones who show the world what math can do.

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I was able to attend briefly the Data Science Summit at Stanford organized by Dr. Boaler and Steven Levitt. Mr. Levitt makes a point in this article that “A mathematical way of thinking, numeracy, data literacy, is far more important today than it has been; the ability to visualize data, the ability to make sense out of a pile of numbers, has never been more important, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at the math curriculum.” His key point is that should the way we teach mathematics in school be centralized around data and computing.

There is a strong emphasis on calculus in most schools including two AP tests which test one’s competency in calculus. Calculus progress determines which students are the most advanced in mathematics in high schools and it has been like that for a very long time now. I believe that calculus foundational skills are absolutely necessary for many physical and social sciences besides college mathematics. However, given where we are as a society and how much digital data is generated every day, I agree that statistics/data science should be emphasized in the high schools and offered as a choice. I personally see this in addition to calculus and not in lieu of. Let’s see how the rollout of  Introduction to Data Science course that was co-developed by UCLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District is received. Also, we as a society will need to figure out how to train teachers around the country to be able to teach such courses.

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I have been always impressed by the research of Dr. Cimpian on gender equality in STEM and the insights he has provided over the past few years. “Dr. Cimpian’s research focuses on the use and development of novel and rigorous methods to study equity and policy, particularly concerning language minorities, women, and sexual minorities,” as per the NYU website.

There are a few STEM majors where the female-to-male ratios are well balanced but in Physics, Enggineering, and Computer Science (PECS) including Pure Mathematics, most colleges report a lot more men (4x to 5x) as compared to women. As per the recent research that got published in Science, NYU researchers found that the ratios are not imbalanced because men are performing better in STEM subjects in high school or related standardized test scores. However, the researchers found that “men with very low high-school GPAs in math and science and very low SAT math scores were choosing these math-intensive majors just as often as women with much higher math and science achievement.”

This is really surprising to me and something I would have not believed. I know there are potentially many reasons why women are not choosing these majors which could be related to their sense of belonging and inclusion in these fields. This study suggest that “interventions to close the gender gap may work to attract high-achieving women; yet, something beyond these student factors may be attracting low-achieving men and repelling average- and low-achieving women, and without addressing those factors, it is unlikely that the PECS gender gap will fully close.”

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It is so encouraging and rewarding to see all the amazing girls recognized across all of the MAA 29 sections. Jessica Wan who is in the 8th grade at Saint John’s School in Puerto Rico will win $5000 for her perfect score. Congratulations to everyone! MAA did a nice job of notifying everyone and I also saw some schools recognizing the award winners via their local publications. It is nice to see so many middle school girls winning the award as well.

The award winners’ names on one page and the announcement from MAA is here.

Reminder of Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10A Prize and Awards qualifications:

Mathematical Association of America (MAA) received support from Awesome Math Girls, an organization dedicated to making mathematics and problem solving more appealing to girls in middle and high school levels. The funds will support a prize and awards, honoring the top-performing female students on the MAA American Mathematics Competition (AMC) 10A. This year’s top-scoring U.S. female from AMC 10A will receive the Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10A Prize of $5,000. Additionally, the five top-scoring AMC 10 A U.S. females from each of the 29 MAA Sections will receive Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10 certificates in honor of their performance on the AMC 10A. The Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10A Prize of $5,000 will be presented to a student at the yearly Mathematical Olympiad Awards Ceremony in June.

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Since last year, I have been trying to figure out how to encourage even more girls to participate and excel in AMC competitions. This time I was more focused on the high school ones as the participation rates have been dropping from AMC 8 to AMC 10. When I figured it out, there were many people who helped to make it a reality. I would first like to thank the wonderful MAA staff – especially Ms. Jennifer Barton and Dr. Rachel Levy who were instrumental in ensuring the right way to do this at scale as well as helping with the ongoing logistics for the next few years. Dr. Yahya Tabesh was very helpful with the idea formulation, and of course I am very grateful to the late Dr. Mirzakhani’s family for permitting us to name the prize in her honor.

I am really excited that the Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10 Prize will be a $5,000 scholarship to the top scoring AMC 10A girl and will be presented at the yearly prestigious Mathematical Olympiad Awards Ceremony. In addition, we will be recognizing top 5 scoring AMC 10A females in 29 MAA sections nationwide.

Here is the MAA Announcement:

Mathematical Association of America Launches the Maryam Mirzakhani AMC 10 Prize and Awards to Support Women in Mathematics

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Since it is that time of the year with all the high school math competitions around the corner, I am sharing the tips and what worked for me.

How to prepare?

The best way to prepare is to practice, practice, practice. There are no real shortcuts to prepare for any math competitions that involve problem solving. If you are lucky and you can find a group (or even one more problem solver) that helps a lot as you always learn from others on different ways to solve a problem or parts of a problem. Solving problems from older tests is always helpful and solving problems from Art of Problem Solving books can assist greatly as well. Most old contests can be found on the web or can be ordered from MAA websites for AMC competitions. Most of the AMC contests including solutions can be found on Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) website. AoPS website has AMC 8, AMC 10, AMC 12, AIME and many other competition problems. Practicing problems will help reinforces concepts and help you with creative and beautiful solutions.. I also found that making mistakes and learning from them has helped me understand the higher level concepts much better. I highly recommend taking systematic approach and gradually building up skills in problem solving. I always ordered books from MAA and AoPS. Besides going gradually through Introduction and Intermediate Series of AoPS books, my favorites were Competition Math for Middle School, AoPS Volume 1: The Basics, and AoPS Volume 2: and Beyond.

MAA published this awesome book for AIME and I used Problem Solving Strategies that help me prepare for both AIME and USAMO.

Here are some basic tips:

1. Don’t be discouraged if you cannot solve all the problems. As you practice more, over time, you will become better for sure. You have to start somewhere. I was able to solve only a few problems (below 10) initially for both AMC 8 and AMC 10/12. I would practice with past tests every weekend (one test per week) during the school year and a few weeks in the summer.
2. You can try challenging yourself by trying to solve AMC 12 while you prepare for AMC 10.
3. There are almost always multiple ways to solve problems. You will learn the beauty of math and learn how to apply concepts better as you practice consistently.
4. It is totally okay to get stuck. It happens to everyone. Come back the next day or next week, and try solving that problem again.
5. There are many online courses, summer camps, classes during school years that can help you with new or advanced concepts. I found (and many of my friends) AwesomeMath summer camps very helpful.
6. Most previous competitions have solutions online. Try to understand the solution when you cannot solve a problem. Even if you have solved a problem, see the solution as they may have solved it using different methods.
7. There is no shortage of problems or competitions that happen throughout the year. Start participating in one and slowly start participating in more as you get more confidence. Not all competitions are created equally. Do not get discouraged when you do not perform well in a particular one. I did horrible in AMC 10 in 8th grade but did a lot better in 9th grade and 10th grade.
8. Check if your school has math club, math teams, or other organizations that meet regularly and participate in individual or team competitions. If not, attempt the problems and ask your math department if they can help especially if you get stuck on a concept.
9. AoPS has a very active and mostly supportive community. You can always become a member and members usually respond when you have a questions.
10. Practice-Be persistent-Don’t be discouraged-Practice again.

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CNN recently published this article based on the research done by Dr. Jessica Cantlon and her team at Carnegie Mellon University. The full report can be found here. I am really encouraged by such research which continues to debunk the myth that boys are better than girls at math.

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If you quickly review the Algebra 2 curriculum at Khan Academy, you see topics such as Polynomials, Complex Numbers, Rational Exponents, Logarithms, Function Transformations, Trig, etc. Whereas when you look at typical introductory courses in Data Science, they tend to focus on charts, histograms, functions, groups, joins, causality, confidence intervals, designing experiments, iterations, etc. The focus tends to be more on Statistics and Probability concepts than classic Algebra. In the following article authored by my favorite Dr. Boaler and Freakonomics author Dr. Levitt, they recommend that modern high school math should focus on Data Science instead of Algebra 2. The arguments are interesting and very sound. However, I believe that one should not have to choose between one or the other. Algebra 2 concepts are still helpful in real life problem solving whether in the financial services industry, healthcare, technology, or government. A solid background in Algebra makes one a better student of data science and Algebra 1 concepts and learnings are too basic to achieve proficiency at Data Science. Here is the article referred to that was published in the LA Times:

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