2nd Annual MSJ Math Tournament Kicks into Gear

By: Anna Zeng

The Mission Math Tournament (MMT) is back for its second year at MSJ. MSJ Math Club’s nine-day competition will run from December 10 to December 19, and the final date to register is December 7. This tournament is aimed “to foster the spirit of recreational critical thinking and creative problem-solving at MSJ and reach out to Mission students who may not otherwise experience competitive math,” says Senior Jeffrey Yuan, chief organizer of this year’s MMT.

Through the next two weeks, MMT will offer a rainbow of mathematical exercises for students to try. The two-part regular round features problems entirely solvable with high-school math, while a Calculus round boasts riddles scrawled in the language of Calculus. The most user-friendly rounds of Mental Math and Estimation offer tricky questions that will delight freshmen and seniors alike. Power rounds, in which a team explores a complex topic through a set of questions, and team rounds promote cooperation between team members.

The tournament organizers, Mission Students Yuan and Juniors Aaron Lin, Jerry Wu, Lewis Chen, and UC Berkeley Freshman Henry Maltby, fondly refer to the event by its formal name, the Mission San Jose High School Stanford/Berkeley Math Tournament Team Placement/Selection Test and Math Tournament (MSJHSSBMTTPSTMT). “The competition is not just for fostering recreational critical thinking, but also for selecting our top teams to compete in the Stanford and Berkeley Math Tournaments in the spring,” says Yuan. Registered students may opt in to be placed into teams and represent their school at these tournaments.

The MMT is a non-profit event. All registration fees go towards awards and prizes, including bonus prizes for individuals or teams performing well in multiple events. All problems given in the tournament are written by the four tournament organizers.

To register, visit msjmath.org and click “Registration” under the tournament’s long acronym, MSJHSSBMTTPSTMT. Registration is $6 for individuals, $11 for teams of 2, $16 for teams of 3, and $20 for teams of 4.