Math and Statistics Department hosts 38th annual Math Contest

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Elon University hosted the 38th annual Mathematics Contest for high school and middle school students on April 2. Forty-nine students from 12 schools competed in the comprehensive division of the North Carolina Committee of Teachers of Mathematics (NCCTM) contest series. 

Jim Beuerle and Kirstie Doehler are the contest directors. The contest is comprised of 30 multiple choice questions with a time limit of 70 minutes. Questions for the 2016 contest were submitted by Chad Awtrey, Jim Beuerle, Jeff Clark and Karen Yokely. Skip Allis is in charge of the sprint portion of the contest, where students are put on teams with contestants from other schools to solve problems as a group.  In this sprint competition, the winning teams are those that generate the correct answer in the shortest amount of time.

After the contest exams were graded, two students tied for first place with only two mistakes out of 30.  A tie-breaking problem was used to determine the overall winner. The third place team was Enloe High school and the top two team spots went to Carnage and Smith, which are both Middle Schools. Cash prizes were awarded to students who won the sprint portion of the contest. The top 10 students from the Elon contest will advance to the state finals, which will be held on April 14, 2016, at the N.C. School of Science and Math.