Math Team
Thank you to L.W., EPHS graduate and former captain of the Math Team, for much of the following information.
The Eden Prairie High School Math Team competes primarily in the Minnesota Math League competitions, where we have won many South Division championships. The regular session consists of five division meets. During each meet, there are four events:
- usually Algebra
- Geometry
- Trigonometry and Miscellaneous Topics
- Functions and Pre-Calculus
Any EPHS Math Team member who wants to attend a meet may do so as an individual. Each individual must choose two events in which to participate. Each event has 7 possible points, so an individual may get a score as high as 14 for the meet. At the end of four individual events, a pre-selected group of 8 individuals will work together on a 20-minute TEAM event, which is worth 24 points. Math League rules require that team members must be evenly distributed across all four events and that each team must have at least two underclassmen (grades 10 and under). (For this reason, you list events in order of preference prior to a meet, and the Math team advisor will assign you to two.)
At the end of the five regular season meets, the top 50 individuals in the state take part in an individual invitational event, which partially determines individual placing in the state tournament. Also, high scoring teams are selected to the state tournament.
Other competitions the EPHS Math Team participates in include the Trig-Star, the ARML Power Contest and the AMC (American Mathematics Competition). The Trig-Star is an annual competition sponsored by the National Society of Professional Surveyors that tests practical application of Trigonometry. The test is given to interested students at EPHS in April. (Students not on Math team who want to test would probably need to contact the Math Team coach ahead of time to indicate interest in taking the exam.) Each participating high school has a top winner, and those scores are compared to determine the state winner. The ARML Power Contest requires a number of team members (15+) to participate. It consists of 2 problem sets, one in November and the second in February, both given at EPHS. Each problem set has a 45-minute time limit. Students group together to work on different parts of the problem sets which are more challenging than regular Math Team contests. Again, interested students who are not part of Math Team would need to contact the Math Team coach well ahead of time to indicate interest in taking part in the competition.
The AMC is the largest nation-wide math competition open to everyone. At the high school level, there is the AMC-10 for freshmen and sophomores and the AMC-12 for any grade. Currently, the AMC 10 is not given at EPHS. (Please see math contest link below.) The AMC-12 test will be given during the national test day in February to Math Team members who sign up with the coach in the fall. High scorers on the AMC then take the AIME (American Invitational Mathematics Exam) at the high school in March. This is a very challenging 3-hour exam with an average score of just over 2 out of 15. High scorers from a weighted scale of both the AMC and the AIME scores move on to the USAMO (USA Mathematics Olympiad), a 6-hour proof-oriented exam. People who do well there are invited to attend the MOSP (Math Olympiad Summer Program), which is the selection program for the USIMO (International Math Olympiad) team. Only one person from our school has made it to the USAMO within the past few years.
The state math league website (which will post team and individual scores) is www.macalester.edu/mathleague
For more information on math competitions and testing information for Eden Prairie students, see Math Contests at Beyond the Classroom.