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Upstate New York Math Team
Mathematical Problem Solving
Dear Upstate New York Math Team,
Welcome back! We are just getting started with the 2024-2025 school year, and eager to reconnect with returning students, and to meet our new mathletes.
Our main focus is the ARML (American Regions Math League) tournament at the end of the school year, with math talks and practices leading up to it. We are also sending more advanced students to the grueling HMMT (Harvard MIT Math Tournament) and encourage all to take part in the beginner-friendly CUBRMC (Cornell University Big Red Math Tournament).
The Upstate New York Math Team is focused on enriching the experience for high school math students. We emphasize material not typically encountered in the school curriculum, especially mathematical problem solving. Upstate New York* is a vast geographical region whose students have immense mathematical potential.
Join us in building a mathematical community here!
Sincerely,
Japheth
—
Japheth Wood is a math professor at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. He directs the Bard Math Circle and the Bard Quantitative Literacy Program.
*For our purposes, Upstate New York refers to that part of New York State which lies outside of Long Island and New York City. Are you not an Upstate New Yorker? We welcome you to practice and learn with us, but you won’t be able to be part of our geographically-defined teams at ARML and other contests.
2024 ARML Recap
We are excited to report that we sent two full teams† to the 2024 ARML (American Regions Math League) at Penn State University. In addition to placing 11th and 41st in Division B, team members enjoyed a math talk and the Karaoke contest the evening before, in the company of thousands of top high school math students from around the Northeast region.
† The Upstate New York Math Team disbanded about a decade ago. Since regrouping, we have only been able to send one team each year, until now. Are you a past team member or coach? We’d love to reconnect!
Upcoming Practices
We are in the planning stages for our math talk and practices series, in which we typically meet on Sunday mornings, 8:30am-10:00am on Zoom or Meet.
This year I want to recognize high school volunteers Willow and Jacob who are our Lesson Coordinators. Please get in touch with them (or me) if you would like to join the Lesson Coordinator team or have a speaker suggestion.
Book Club! We plan to use Paul Zeitz’s Art and Craft of Problem Solving book as a common text this year. We’ll recommend readings before talks and practices, and suggest follow up problems afterwards. This is a great text to have on hand for enhancing your mathematical knowledge and problem solving technique, so grab a copy!
We hope you will join us, once our schedule starts rolling out. Stay tuned.
CUBRMC
Get ready for Cornell University’s 2nd annual Big Red Math Competition on Saturday, October 26th.
The early bird registration period closes this Sunday, October 6. If you miss that, you can still register until Sunday, October 13. Your coach, math teacher, or parent can register your team (a full team is 5 students) or you can register as an individual.
CUBRMC is a great contest for high school students who are getting their start in team math contests. You’ll meet other students from around New York, neighboring states, and beyond. Ithaca and the Cornell University campus are absolutely gorgeous at this time of year. Enjoy Upstate New York!
AMC 10/12 and 8
Make sure to take the AMC contests! The AMC (American Mathematics Competition) is a program of the MAA (Math Association of America), a professional society of mathematicians. The questions are always interesting, challenging, and enjoyable.
AMC 10A and 12A contests: Wednesday, November 6, 2024
AMC 10B and 12B contests: Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Students do not register directly with the AMC, but arrange to take the AMC contests through their contest manager, typically a math teacher at their school.
Ask your math teacher or math team coach if your school is offering the AMC contests. If not, encourage them to do so. They can get started at maa.org/student-programs/amc (this page is for contest managers, not students). You might also be able to find a nearby school to take the AMC contests by doing a School Search, and then making your own arrangements.
The MAA recently updated their website, and I can no longer find the list of colleges and universities, like Bard College, that offer the AMC contests. Please let me know if you find it!
The AMC 12 is a 25-question, 75-minute multiple-choice competition designed for students in grades 12 and below. It covers the full high school mathematics curriculum, including trigonometry, advanced algebra, and advanced geometry. Calculus is excluded.‡
Practice old AMC 12 problems on the Art of Problem Solving Wiki!
The AMC 10 is a 25-question, 75-minute multiple-choice competition designed for students in grades 10 and below. The content covers mathematics typically taught in grades 9 and 10, including elementary algebra, basic geometry (such as the Pythagorean Theorem), area and volume formulas, elementary number theory, and elementary probability. Advanced topics like trigonometry, advanced algebra, and advanced geometry are excluded.‡
Practice old AMC 10 problems on the Art of Problem Solving Wiki!
The AMC 8 is a 25-question, 40-minute competition designed for students in grade 8 and below. The competition focuses on middle school mathematics topics, including counting and probability, estimation, proportional reasoning, elementary geometry (including the Pythagorean Theorem), spatial visualization, and interpreting graphs and tables. Some of the later questions may touch on beginning algebra topics, such as linear or quadratic functions and coordinate geometry.‡
Practice old AMC 8 problems on the Art of Problem Solving Wiki!
We will request your AMC scores when you apply to be on the Upstate New York ARML Team.
‡These descriptions of the AMC contests are from https://maa.org/amcreg/
HMMT
The Harvard MIT Math Tournament is grueling and only suitable for experienced students who have already attended ARML and beyond. Our Advanced Contest Coordinator, Jacob, is organizing a team for the February Tournament.
Opportunities
We are seeking high school volunteers to join our Social Media (plus web) and Lesson Coordinator teams. We are also looking for volunteer presenters (typically math coaches, teachers and professors) for our talk and training series. Please get in touch if you are interested or have suggestions.
Do you know of opportunities of interest to the Upstate New York Math Team members? Please send them our way!
Accolades
A big shout out to Emily Yu who was the 2024 NYSML winner, won a Bronze Medal on the USAMO, and the Jane Street AMC 12A award. Coach George Reuter shared in an April 2024 email that “Emily Yu (Monroe) finished first, with a tiebreaker round time of about 3:30. We believe she may be the first girl ever to win NYSML. Congratulations to Emily!)”
Congratulations as well to Jason Lian for earning an honorable mention on the USAJMO and Iris Wang for receiving the DE Shaw Group AMC 10A award of the Metro NY MAA Section.
Have you or someone you know accomplished something amazing and deserve to be recognized? Please send in your update to be featured here.
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