Math Explorations
Math Explorations
Instructor: Brandon Muliadi
Contact info: brandon.muliadi@gmail.com
About me: My name is Brandon and I'm a junior at Cupertino High School who likes math. As far as competitions go, I qualified for AIME last year, and my subject preference is combinatorics > algebra > number theory > geometry.
Essential Info
Class is held every Tuesday at Creekside Park from 8:00 to 9:15 PM in Cupertino. Math Explorations is currently only available to Cupertino students!
Class Description
Designed specifically for the ambitious, aspiring middle school mathematician, Math Explorations is a deep dive into advanced competition math concepts. In this class, you will prepare for and participate in several math competitions outside of MOEMS and the AMCs. We will also look at admissions tests for some popular math camps. The competitions include:
- ARML Local: an in-person team competition where teams of six complete problems in three rounds, each with unique rules.
- Bay Area Math Olympiad (BAMO): a local proof oriented competition, with five problems to be solved in four hours.
- Harrison Chen Memorial Math Competition (HCMMC): our annual home-grown competition. 12 questions, 60 minutes.
- Pi Math Contest: an online competition run by Alphastar Academy, with thousands of dollars of vouchers given out in prizes.
- Purple Comet! Math Meet: an online team competition, consisting of 20 problems to be solved in 60 minutes by a team of six.
- Mustang Math Tournament: an in-person team competition for middle schoolers held at Fremont High School, with a unique format.
- Online Monmouth Math Competition (OMMC): an online team competition for teams of up to 4, lasting ten days and with 25 problems to solve.
- USA Mathematical Talent Search (USAMTS) - an online proof-oriented competition consisting of three one-month rounds, during which participants work on a set of five challenging problems. Participants who do exceptionally well are invited to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), the same contest that high scorers on the AMC 10 and AMC 12 take.
We’ll also cover admissions tests for these math camps:
- AwesomeMath Summer Program: an online math camp that focuses on competition math.
- MathPath: an in-person camp aiming to introduce higher mathematics to middle schoolers.
- Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS): a highly prestigious math camp emphasizing number theory and restbearch.
Most classes will start with some simpler problems to demonstrate a new idea, then more challenging problems using that concept. Some classes will be devoted to mock contests. Occasionally we will run lessons on special topics. You’ll get to vote on what topics you want to see in these lessons.
I will send out notes for each class, so if you have to miss class for any reason, you can see what you missed.
Expectations
To help you learn from the material presented in class and prepare effectively for competitions, I will assign homework every week, which will be due the next week. The homework problems will be challenging, and there is no expectation that you solve every one. However, you should try every problem and show what you attempted even if you didn’t find a full solution.
There is also no expectation that you participate in all of the listed competitions. However, I encourage you to participate when possible. Many of these contests give a generous time window to compete. Purple Comet and Pi Math Contest both give a 10+ day window to take the contest. OMMC gives 10 days to work on the problem set, and USAMTS gives an entire 30 days for their problems.