SAN DIEGO, Calif.–Twelve top-notch high school math students, including two Indian-Americans, from the US, Canada, and the UK, will show what’s right with the educational system when they compete in the 2018 Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship in San Diego Jan. 13.
The contestants will compete for more than $30,000 in cash and prizes. The top prize is $10,000: $5,000 for the contestant and $5,000 for his or her school’s math department.
Indian-American students are:
Saaketh Vedantam, junior, American Heritage School (FL). His favorite thing about school is calculus class, aka the Crazy 8’s. He was a USAMO qualifier in 9th and 10th grades, and Florida MATHCOUNTS champion in 8th grade. Saaketh saw snow for the first time this year.
| Vignesh Rajmohan, senior, James L. Mann High School (SC). He was selected to compete at the National Judicial Competition for mock trial and finished third in the Beta Club Quiz Bowl National Competition. If he wins first prize, he will invest money in his ongoing research on natural methods of water purification and further develop his service project, Project Untether. Vignesh’s favorite thing about school is the new MakerSpace. |
Among the 12 contestants are musicians, a tournament badminton player, a student researching natural methods of water purification, one who dislikes eating, and one who has eaten the head of a pig.
All the students and their schools are:
| Samuel Goodman | Hyde Park Middle School (NV) |
| Matthew Guo | Evergreen Valley High School (CA) |
| Howard Halim | University of Toronto Schools (Canada) |
| Andrew Hwang | Adlai E. Stevenson High School (IL) |
| Andrew Lee | Robert E. Melican Middle School (MA) |
| Brian Liu | High Technology High School (NJ) |
| Yuji Okitani | Tapton School (UK) |
| Vignesh Rajmohan | J.L. Mann High School (SC) |
| Moses Schindler | Ladue Horton Watkins High School (MO) |
| Saaketh Vedantam | American Heritage School (FL) |
| Justin Yu | Williams High School (TX) |
| Anlin Zhang | Canyon Crest Academy (San Diego) |
When: Saturday, Jan. 13, 2018, 1:00-2:30 p.m.
Where: San Diego Convention Center, Room 6C
The twelve contestants were selected for the Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship based on their scores on an online qualifying test with questions on algebra, trigonometry, probability, and math history, which was administered by high school math teachers in the US, Canada, and the UK using Maple TA.
The game will be webcast live to cheering classmates and math fans everywhere at: www.livestream.com/psav/wwtbam2018.
Who Wants to Be a Mathematician—Fun to the nth power!
This is the ninth annual Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship, which is like a football game for the mind with a live audience often holding up signs for their favorite contestant. Since the game began as a regional game in 2001, more than 800 students have won over $500,000 in cash and prizes and have been cheered on by over 20,000 classmates.
Who Wants to Be a Mathematician is part of the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, attended by more than 6,000 mathematicians, and is part of Mathemati-Con, a day of free, fun, public events at the meeting.
The contest is sponsored by the Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Technology Sponsor Maplesoft, the Online Community Sponsor Art of Problem Solving (headquartered in San Diego), the University of Southampton (UK), the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), Texas Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, and the AMS.
