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Rising from second place in the fall to edge out last semester’s winners, the team of Aydin Gerek ’07 (Istanbul, Turkey), Ko Ko Maung’07 (Tharkayta Yangon, Myanmar), and biochemistry major Myat Lin ’04 (Yangon, Myanmar) took the $600 prize for first place in the math department’s spring Team Barge competition.
The top two Barge teams in the fall and spring 2003-04 contests each earned over $1,000. Gerek also took the $500 prize for first place in the 2004 Individual Barge Mathematics Contest, which is open to first-year students and sophomores.
Finishing second in Team Barge this semester were the fall champions, who received $450: chemical engineering major Maria Azimova ’06 (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Jacob Carson ’06 (New Richmond, Ohio), and Ekaterina Jager ’05(Tashkent, Uzbekistan), who is pursing a B.S. in electrical & computer engineering and B.A. in mathematics. Carson also finished second in Individual Barge, receiving a $300 prize.
Earning the $300 prize for third place were electrical and computer engineering major Joe Galyean ’04 (Northampton, Pa.), Jeb Madigan ’04 (Binghamton, N.Y.), a double major in English and art, and Jesse Nickerson ’05 (Newmarket, N.H.), who is pursuing a B.S. in mechanical engineering and B.A. in math.
In Barge, groups of three to five students attempt to solve a different weekly problem over eight weeks. Over a dozen teams submitted solutions for the majority of the problems this semester, says organizer Ethan Berkove, assistant professor of mathematics.
“The top three teams all scored 75-80 or above, but there were three more teams in the 70s, and another two teams in the 60s,” he notes. “A number of the solutions were very nice.”
Competitors are permitted to consult with books, computers, and other resources to solve the problems, but not faculty. The problems usually involve some ingenuity or insight and generally do not rely on much background information from previous courses. The topics range over all areas of mathematics: probability, geometry, number theory, combinatorics, algebra, calculus, etc.
Sample problem from the fall:
A Silly Sum: What is the sum of all the digits that make up the numbers in the list {1, 2, 3, 4, , 2001, 2002, 2003}?
Answer: 28,014
The math department sponsors a Problem Solving Group that meets each week to discuss and solve mathematics problems, which helps students prepare for the Team and Individual Barge Competitions, the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges (LVAIC) Math Contest, and the William Powell Putnam Mathematical Competition. For the past four years, a Lafayette team has taken first place in the LVAIC Math Contest.