Elementary School Mathletes Flex Their Mathematical Muscles
May 12, 2022 08:09AM ● By Jeanne Fratello
The gold-medal-winning team of mathletes from Robinson Elementary in Manhattan Beach.
At the Fifth Annual MBUSD Elementary Math Contest on Wednesday, young Manhattan Beach mathletes showed their mettle with high-speed calculations on tricky math problems.
The event brought together teams of 5th, 4th, and even 3rd grade students from Grand View, Meadows, Pacific, Pennekamp, and Robinson elementary schools. All told, more than 80 mathletes competed in the contest.
The contest, a joint endeavor with MBUSD, the MB/X Foundation, and the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation (MBEF), featured an individual competition as well as a team competition.
The individual gold medal winners (10 out of 10 problems solved correctlly), included Defne Bayiz of Meadows, Evan Lin of Robinson, Zoey Rubinson of Grand View, Malik Salah of Meadows, and Alicia Zhong of Pennekamp.
(Individual winners at the competition)
The gold medal winner in the team competition was the Robinson Elementary team of Rylan Kish, Evan Lin, Payton Messman, Greyson Nugent, and North Rementer.
An 'Electric' Competition
The math students have been practicing for months in their after-school math clubs for this and other competitions. On Wednesday, the enthusiasm among students in the Joslyn Center was overflowing.
Meadows Elementary 5th grade teacher Michelle Legaspi, the emcee of the program, described the feeling in the room as "electric."
After a 30-minute individual competition, the participants gleefully opened brown bags that were sitting on the tables to find a multitude of snacks and treats.
Then they settled back down for the lively 30-minute team competition, and finally a fast-paced, five-minute relay-style tiebreaker among the leading teams.
After the competition, Legaspi announced the correct answers, to cheers of delight from among the participants.
"Whether or not they got the answer correct, when I read the answer, you could just watch the room erupt," said Legaspi.
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
The math questions ranged from challenging to extremely difficult. Even an adult who is competent in math might have struggled with some of the questions. For example:
Question from the Individual Round: Oliver is thinking of a four-digit number Each digit is greater than every digit to its right. Only the digits 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 are used. The four-digit number is a multiple of 8. What number is Oliver thinking of?
Answer: 8640. To solve this one quickly, it helps to know one mathlete trick: The divisibility rule for 8 is that for a number to be divisible by 8, the last three digits of that number have to be divisible by 8.
Question from the Team Round: If Fran piles her stickers in groups of 8, there are 3 left over. If she piles them instead in groups of 10, there are 3 left over. If she piles them instead in groups of 12, there are 3 left over. Fran has fewer than 1,000 stickers. What is the greatest number of stickers Fran could have?
Answer: 963. To solve this one quickly, you would find the least common multiple of 8, 10, and 12, which is 120. Then starting with 3 (the leftover number), you count up by 120 until you get to the highest number less than 1,000. (Note that in a national mathlete competition, only 28% of students got this problem correct.)
