Mathletes

By Simone Miller-

Ida Crown’s mathletes team kicked off the year in their first meet on Thursday, September 26.

Ida Crown’s team, led by faculty advisor Mrs. Pederson and captains Jacob Miller, Nathan Fensterheim, and Benny Grey, competes within the North Suburban Mathematics League of Illinois. The competition is split up into six divisions based on schools’ previous mathletes records. Ida Crown is a member of the Cook division, the lowest ranking division. Each grade level receives a separate test, and there is an additional oral division for one student at any grade level from each school.

Each grade level test focuses on different topics in math. During this past competition, freshmen focused on number bases, sophomores studies functions, juniors concentrated on polynomials, seniors answered questions on the theory of equations, and oralists studied planning and scheduling algorithms.

Ida Crown scored 95 points total, landing the team sixth place overall in the Cook Division, fifth place in the freshman division, third in sophomore, eighth in junior, eighth in seniors, and sixth in orals.

The team also performed well on the candy-bar challenge, a collaborative math contest which the whole team works on together, winning the challenge for the second time in Ida Crown history. The competition is named fittingly after its prize: a box of candy bars. The mathletes were pleasantly surprised when they found out that all the candy was kosher.

“Our team got a great start with this first meet, and I have high hopes for the rest of the season. We have a really solid team this year, and I believe that we can go far,” Captain Benny Grey says.

Freshman Gideon Miller earned a perfect score, a feat not accomplished by Ida Crown students in the past three years. “I was nervous for my first mathletes meet, but I was really happy about the outcome, and more importantly, I had a good time.”

In addition, due to senior Jacob Miller’s performance last year, Ida Crown earned first place in the Cook division’s 2018-2019 oral competition. With 23 points in the oral division so far from this most recent meet, the team hopes to win the same title for the second year in a row. 

“Orals provides a great opportunity to learn new mathematical concepts,” says Captain Jacob Miller. “I’ve matured mathematically from the rigorous justification requirement of orals problems, and I hope to continue our team’s winning streak this year.”