“Suppose f is a quadratic function satisfying f(6)=0, f(-6)=0, and f(0)=10. Then f(4)=
A. 5 B. 5.5 C. 5.555 D. 5.666 E. None of the above.
“OK, come on up here to the board and do those computations for us. That’s right, you there in the tartan-plaid bathrobe. Here’s the chalk. Be prepared to explain your work.”
That’s how I began a 1994 column about Lehigh University’s annual Mathematics Contest for High School students, the first of many I wrote over the years about the Lehigh Valley’s amazing young math students.
Much braver or stupider back then, I actually took the test along with the kids. I was an above-average math student back in high school, but I beat the scores of only about a third of the 195 participants.
Today, more than 30 years further removed from my last math class, I have no doubt I would finish dead last. The answer to that question was C, by the way, not that I would have known without a cheat sheet.
The person who invited me to participate in that contest was Lehigh University math professor Don Davis, who almost 20 years later was featured in a series of my columns and blog posts about the amazing accomplishments of the Lehigh Valley Math Team, coached by Davis and featuring some of the smartest kids in this area and beyond into neighboring regions and states.
I spent a Sunday afternoon at one of the team’s practices and interviewed several team members, their parents and other adults associated with the team. Needless to say, I was academically out of my depth — I once compared myself to a dog watching someone juggle — but I felt great about giving more attention to kids who are just as talented and dedicated as any of the high school athletes whose feats get a lot more public acclaim.
So I was happy to hear the other day from Davis, who was highlighted again last year with a Morning Call story about the team’s national championship coinciding with his retirement from Lehigh after 50 years there. He’s still coaching.
Here’s what he wrote:
“We are still going strong. We won the national championship again this year in the American Regions Math League and yesterday received the first-place award in the Princeton contest for the third straight year (Next finishers 2. Washington state 3. Texas 4. NYC 5. Florida 6. A training center in the SFBay Area.)
“At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpNFZJNGIBc is a talk I gave about the team to an MIT alumni group. There are a few things in the talk that might be interesting in your column (the taking away of five N.J. counties from us, how our team developed, and our superstar Alexander Wang).
“Something else that might be interesting — in your long-ago article you featured Parkland student Claire Tang. As a retirement gift to me, her mom made a quilt out of Claire’s six team T-shirts, and it now hangs on the wall at Lehigh University.
“The team is named Lehigh Valley but draws from a wide area. Yesterday we had one Parkland student on the 8-person A team, and students from Parkland and Emmaus on the 8-person B team.”
I encourage you to follow that link, not just to learn more about how these kids train to compete so successfully in national competitions, but also to see the kinds of questions they answer, how the competitions are conducted and how the local team got started. You also can find those old columns and blog posts by googling my name, Morning Call and Don Davis.
Davis points out that just because these kids focus on math doesn’t mean they aren’t well-rounded. Many of them also are outstanding musicians and/or excel — even compete — in other subjects as well.
A great example is Wang, the team’s Millburn, New Jersey, senior who next year has a chance to become the first student in the world ever to place in the top 10 four times in the International Mathematical Olympiad. He has performed piano in Carnegie Hall after winning the International Young Artists Competition hosted by National League Performance Arts. He also was selected to the New Jersey All State Mixed Chorus and was a finalist last year to compete on the U.S. team in the International Computer Science Olympiad.
Davis, 80, told me he uses a cane or walker to get around these days, so he didn’t attend any of this year’s competitions in person because of the crowds, deferring to his other coaches. But he still enjoys running the practices and organizing the team.
Unfortunately, he said, he may have to step down because he and his wife are considering moving out of the area to be closer to their daughter and grandchildren. Whatever they decide, he intends to remain at least through next summer’s American Regions Mathematics League competition and picnic.
“I love the kids, and I love the parents,” he explained. “I will really miss it if we move.”
One quick aside: We’re ready to wrap up this year’s Bulwer-Lytton writing contest, in which you’re challenged to submit the first sentence of the worst possible novel.
There’s still time to email me your sentence or sentences (multiple entries are fine). I’ll wait one more week before I begin preparing your entries for submission to my team of judges.
Enough procrastination. Write.
This is a contributed opinion column. Bill White can be reached at whitebil1974@gmail.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.
