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A wonderful holiday in Beijing: Berkeley Mini Math Tournament 2017

January 4, 2018

A wonderful holiday in Beijing: Berkeley Mini Math Tournament 2017

How did you spend this past Christmas holiday? Did you travel to another country or just take a break in Shanghai? Despite the relaxing holiday season, fifteen SHSID 7th and 8th graders, all math experts, traveled to Beijing during the Christmas holidays for an inter-school math competition. The competition, named the Berkeley Mini Math Tournament (BmMT), was organized by the Mathematics Department of Berkeley University for middle school students in the US and China. This year was the 5th Berkeley Mini Math Tournament ever, and the first time SHSID students were invited to participate. The four-hour tournament consisted of four different sets of individual and group challenges, including an individual round, a group round, a speed round, and finally a puzzle round. Our fifteen warriors, divided into three groups, went to face off again 200+ students in 50+ groups from 20+ elite schools all over China, but they were not frightened at all!

After four hours of intense competition, the SHSIDers won many prizes in the Tournament! For the group rounds, our best group, consisting of Andy Van Horssen, Victor Kang, and Yusuke Atsuta from 8th Grade, as well as Eric He and Lucas Wu from 7th Grade won 4th place in terms of overall performance out of the total 50+ student groups. What’s more, that same team also won 3rd place in the group round, another 3rd place in the speed round, and a 5th place in the puzzle round. For the individual round, Victor Kang from 8th Grade and Jonathan Zou from 7th Grade tied at 13/20 points, placing them 32nd out of more than 200 students.

The contests were only part of the happenings during the tournament day. After the contests, we had a chance to hear two inspiring speeches– one from Dr. Po-Shen Loh, former coach of the US National Olympic math team, and the other from Mr. Moor Xu, a current math PhD student from Berkeley University and the Chairman of the Organization Committee for this tournament. Dr. Loh gave us an interesting math lecture on how the different numbers depend on different facets of a dice and the mathematical logic behind them, and drawing on these rules of logic, how to wi Monopoly by throwing the dice with particular hand motions.

Mr. Xu then gave us a speech on the spirit of BmMT. He said that the competition is more like a competition with yourself rather than a competition against other students. Other than scoring high in the competition, what’s equally important is making new friends with peer students from other schools, because these new friends might become your best and life-long friends. Moreover, Mr. Xu urged us to share our contest questions with our schoolmates so that more students would get a chance to enjoy the challenges of these math problems.

Overall, we think the Berkeley Mini Math Tournament was a terrific experience for the Christmas holiday this year. All the fifteen SHSIDers enjoyed the mental thrill of difficult math questions throughout the contest, enhanced their bonds through struggle, and made new friends who share the same passion towards math. They truly hope more students from SHSID will participate in next year’s Berkeley Mini Math Tournament.

(Written by Lucas Wu 7(1) Directed by Ms. Gu Pictures by Lucas Wu 7(1) )