Minnesota State High School Mathematics League
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The Minnesota State High School Mathematics League is a high school mathematics league in the state of Minnesota. It was founded in 1980 by Macalester College professor Wayne Roberts. The league holds five statewide tournaments per year from November through February, as well as a state tournament in March.
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[edit] Questions
The problems posed are divided into five events - Individual events A, B, C, and D, and the team event. Events A, B, C, and D usually consist of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and precalculus topics, respectively. The team event is a mix of all four.[1]
[edit] Scoring
Each team member chooses to compete in two individual events, and all team members compete in the team event. Each high school chooses its eight top members, including at least two students below the eleventh grade, as its "varsity" team. This is the team that actually racks up points in the name of the school; the other students simply compete for themselves. Each individual event contains one one point question and three two point questions, so the maximum a person may score per meet is fourteen points. The team events each contain six questions worth four points each. A team's score is determined by adding the individual scores of the varsity members and the varsity team score. At the end of the season, the teams with the highest scores in the state continue to the state tournament.[1]
[edit] State Tournament
The 24th annual State Tournament was held at South St. Paul High School in March 2008. The state tournaments before that one were usually held at Eagan High School. The State tournament begins with the Invitational event. The invitational is a 30 min test taken by the top 50 students in the season. This is followed by the Math Bowl and an awards ceremony. The Math Bowl brings together the top 10 students from the Invitational and they compete on stage in a MATHCOUNTS "countdown" style format. Later during the day, there is a meet that is structured like the other meets during the year. The only exception is that there are 15. min for an individual event and 30 min. for a team event. The tournament culminates with a banquet in the evening and a second set of awards.
[edit] Winners
The League officially recognizes individual and team winners of two types each season, one with the highest overall season score, and one with the highest state tournament score. Since the 1988-1989 season, the League has recognized an additional Class A state tournament winner. In 2004-2005, this designation was changed to Tier 2 rather than Class A, with larger schools designated as Tier 1.[2]
Ten students have achieved perfect scores of 70 points in the regular season: Erik Vee in 1991-1992, Derek Farmer in 1993-1994, Michael Korn in 1995-1996, Andrew Gacek, Nate Sheetz, and Sam Lindsay-Levine in 1999-2000, Dan Baker in 2002-2003, Ning Zhou in 2003-2004, Nick Arnosti in 2006-2007, and Shui Hu in 2007-2008. Perfect scores on the state tournament are more common, but no student has ever achieved perfect scores in the regular season and tournament in the same year.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Minnesota State High School Math League Coach's Manual 2006 – 2007 (PDF). Minnesota State High School Math League. Retrieved on 2007-04-27.
- ^ 1980-2005 data from Roberts, A. Wayne (2005). Minnesota Math League XXV (in English). Beaver's Pond Press. ISBN 1592981119.
- ^ a b c d e f g Perfect season score
