Math Contest

By David Shih

The Senior Math Olympiad, a math competition, demonstrates fierce competition of mathematics among the top students at local high schools in the Santa Clara Valley. Piedmont Hills’ selected mathematicians this year are seniors Asher Twu and Sophia Xiao. Sophia Got first place in division 2, and Asher got 5th place. The competition took place on Dec. 8 from 8:30 am to 11:30 am at Valley Christian High School.

Piedmont Hills currently is in the second division of the competition. This means that the contestants of our school will only have to go up against contestants in the same division.

Sophia was also ranked 4th out of the whole completion (Division 1 and 2).

“It was really unexpected that I won the competition (for division 2) and placed 4th overall. I usually get really nervous before the competition and it was really a big surprise that we beat out big schools such as Lynbrook, Evergreen and Valley Christian, “stated Sophia after the competition.

The content of the event ranges from Geometry to Algebra 2 for the students to solve. The competition took roughly 2 hours, followed up by another mini event where participants are required to participate.

“This event is really just another way for me to pursue math outside school not just restricted by the schools classes that are offered and stuff like that,” said Sophia. “This will be last event that I can put towards colleges so it’s fairly important (to me)”.

Preparing and studying for this event also took up a lot of time. Even though the content of the problems require skills from Pre-Calculus, the context the problems are put in were very confusing. As a result, the contestants spent hours training for the event.

“I didn’t really want to join, Sophia just forced me to join, but seriously. I really enjoy doing math and it’s just another way for me to get recognition for something I love.” said Asher.

The event will also include history problems that focuses when certain theorems was introduced and accepted.

Another senior Anne Ouyang was invited to the event, but unfortunately couldn’t make the event due to another coding competition that fell on the same day.             The Senior Math Olympiad was not only just a competition for math. It is also a bonding event that allows students that are interested in math, to get to know one another and compete for something that they love.