Charlotte Mathematics Club
Newsletter, Fall 2007

The club participates in the Tournament of Towns ("T of T"), a Russian competition, in November and March. We also hope to participate in this year's Mandelbrot Competition (the first round would be in October; see our plea for a coordinator below). Road trips include the Duke Math Meet on November 17, and the College of Charleston Math Meet in February. The December meeting is a pizza & welcome-back-alumni event, and we gather in May for an end-of-year picnic.

Students work in two separate groups: a junior group generally consisting of students in Pre-algebra, Algebra 1, and in some cases Geometry, and a senior group consisting of students in Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus and Calculus. (This year the junior group will participate in the 7th and 8th grade division of the MOEMS problem solving contest.) We encourage participants to choose the group that best fits their mathematical level.

Refreshment Coordinator:

We ask CMC families to sign up at meetings to bring snacks for our breaks. A Refreshment Coordinator is needed to keep track of and remind those that sign up, and to manage the set up and clean up of the refreshments. Two or three people could share this position.

Mandelbrot Coordinator:

The Mandelbrot Competition has both individual (5 rounds, starting in October) and team (3 rounds, starting in January) events. (Past coordinators have been Kathy Fletcher and Vicky Kaseorg.) The Math Club has participated in the Mandelbrot Competition at regional and national levels in recent years, but will not be able to participate this year unless a coordinator is found prior to the registration deadline. Please contact Susan Schaeffer for details on what is involved.

The Art of Problem Solving Foundation (AoPS; a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation) has accepted the Charlotte Mathematics Club as part of their Local Programs Initiative. This means that donors to AoPS can designate that their donation go to the Charlotte Math Club. (The Foundation's overhead for this service is 2% of the designated contributions.) Follow the link on the CMC homepage to make an online donation to AoPS; remember to enter the Charlotte Math Club as the designated recipient of your donation. Thank you!

The CMC sells copies of The Art of Problem Solving (Volumes 1 & 2, and solutions; by Sandor Lehoczky and Richard Rusczyk) as a fundraiser, courtesy of a generous donation from Richard Rusczyk. These books are an excellent resource for problem solving skills and practice problems. See the AoPS Bookstore for announcements of other AoPS books.

There are no dues, although each student is asked to bring $1 to the December meeting to be used for a thank you gift for PDS. The CMC is indebted to those that have donated time, space and funds. PDS has been a gracious host for many years, and we are the beneficiaries of the generous contributions from Dale Halton, Richard Rusczyk, coauthor of The Art of Problem Solving, and other, anonymous, benefactors.

Drew Boyka, Yutong Chen, Brendan Fletcher, and Yevgeniy Grechka traveled with the North Carolina ARML teams to compete at Penn State in June. North Carolina's A and B teams each placed in 4th place in their dividsions. Read about it at the NC ARML page. Brendan Fletcher participated on the 4-member NC team that placed 8th at the 2007 MATHCOUNTS National Competition in May in Fort Worth, TX. (See here for results.)

Congratulations to our 2006-07 Regional Mandelbrot team for finishing in the first tier with a cumulative score of 192.

Please share news of other club members and alumni!

Summer Ventures and the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) are opportunities that many of our club members have found rewarding. Summer Ventures is a four-week residential summer program in math and science for rising 11th and 12th graders, hosted by a number of North Carolina univeristies. NCSSM is a public residential high school (grades 11 and 12) in Durham with a challenging curriculum centered on science and mathematics. Both Summer Ventures and NCSSM are free to NC residents via a competitive admissions process. The deadline for applications to either program is in January, so start looking into these great opportunities now!

The Mecklenburg Math Club (MMC) is a group for students of grades 4 through 6. Local teachers and mathematicians lead the students in problem-solving sessions and other interesting math-related activities. This year, the MMC will again participate in the Mathematical Olympiads for Elementary Schools (MOEMS). The MMC-South Chapter will meet at PDS from 9:30 to 11:30 A.M. on the same dates as our club. Contact Vicky Kaseorg or see the MMC website for more information.

The American Mathematics Contest->8 (AMC->8) will be administered in schools on Tuesday, November 13. Remind your math teacher about the AMC->8; the deadline for registration is mid-October. (AMC->10 and AMC->12 day will be either Tuesday, February 12, 2007, or Wednesday, February 27, 2008.)

The MATHCOUNTS Piedmont Chapter competition at UNCC's Cone Center will be in February; the State competition will be in March at NCSSM.

The USA Mathematical Talent Search (USAMTS) is a free mathematics competition open to all United States high school students. Many CMC members have enjoyed this competition in the past; the problems are varied and interesting, and the contest organizers are responsive. Students may enter the competition at any time of the academic year; registration and instructions for how to participate are at the USAMTS website.

Some of our members also compete in the (internet-based) USA Computing Olympiad (USACO). There are fall, winter, and spring programming contests; more information (including dates!) is available at the USACO website.