Math students await contest results

MHS math challenge participants after 14-hour ordeal

$Math students await contest results$

Credit: photo Britt Combs

Still weary from 14 hours of non-stop math, but on time for school, nevertheless, these McDowell High students and their teachers, Holly Goforth and Sumer Inman, have to wait until April to learn if they'll get a share of the $100,000 prize from Moody's Math Challenge.

By Britt Combs
Published: March 09, 2010

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Still fatigued from all the hours of work over the weekend, McDowell High math students say they feel pretty good about their chances in the Moody's Math Challenge.

Two five-member teams, coached by two teachers -- Holly Goforth and Sumer Inman, crunched numbers for 14 hours straight on Saturday, in a bid to win a share of $100,000 in scholarship prizes offered by Moody's for outstanding math students.

At 7 a.m., the kids got their challenge: The teams were given a little data about the U.S. Census, then asked to determine the best method of "adjusting the population figures for the census, selecting an apportionment method and offering suggestions to the states for redistricting," according to the instructions.

Their response and answers had to be mathematically justified and illustrated using graphs and charts and included in an essay, composed by the whole teams.

Student Isabel Hillman said the problem was challenging indeed.

"We worked hard the whole time," she said. "We gave it all we had."

Both she and Emily Smith said they thought their respective teams completed the task on time and felt theirs was a good effort. But the results will not be known for a couple of months -- a long wait for kids exhausted from a Saturday in math class.

During a chat with The McDowell News Tuesday morning, several of the kids said the challenge was a lot of fun. One asked if their story was "front page news-worthy."

Someone else responded that any time kids spend a beautiful spring Saturday in school without a court order, that's news.