Latin School of Chicago

Latin Magazine Summer 2019

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MATHLETES COMPETE AT LATIN 30 Even before the math retreat, Tom Canright, a seventh grade math teacher, writes the team questions during summer break, a task he took on in 2013 when Hawley retired. "It takes me about four or five hours a day for a full week to write those," said Canright. "Then I send them to each grade's math team for feedback. They have a month to critique the questions. Sometimes they fine tune them, but sometimes they don't like what I've done and they throw out a question and substitute their own." Canright also puts together an opening video with a medley of songs with math as a theme, proofreads all the questions during winter break, creates an answer key, runs the grading room and serves as master of ceremonies during the awards ceremony. Bonneau handles registration, classroom testing assignments, coordinates day-of-contest responsibilities for the math faculty, and obtains volunteer scorers and proctors. Students from Latin are selected based upon a number of factors. From November to March, students can participate in Math Olympiad, where they take a monthly Olympiad test. Each teacher also gives a qualifying test. In addition, teachers look at student's attendance during the weekly Math Club that meets for a half hour before school on Wednesday mornings. Bonneau and Canright select the sixth and seventh graders, respectively, based on a cumulative assessment of Olympiad test scores, Math Club attendance and qualifying test results, The symbols , , , , represent four different single digit numbers in which the following equations are true: x = + = x = — = + + + Calculate 5 T H G R A D E Q U E S T I O N F R O M 2 0 0 7 A train that is 4 ½ miles long passes over a bridge that is 2 ¼ miles long traveling at 60 miles per hour. How many seconds will it take the train to pass completely over the bridge? 6 T H G R A D E Q U E S T I O N F R O M 2 0 0 0 How many integers, x, in the set {1, 2, 3, 4, … 2010, 2011} are there such that x3 + x4 is a perfect cube? 8 T H G R A D E Q U E S T I O N F R O M 2 0 0 0 while Daley Chan, lower school math teacher, and Jessie Shorr, middle school math teacher, select the fifth and eighth graders, respectively. The competition has evolved from its humble beginnings in 2000 when it hosted six other schools and used 10 classrooms to administer the contest. With the building of the middle school in 2007, Latin can now physically host more students. Since then, the event has filled to capacity and has a waiting list of 10 to 12 schools. "We've also had to up our game to make the questions more difficult," said Bonneau, explaining that many more students do math as an extracurricular than in years past. Write the following continued fraction as an improper fraction: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 1 1 1 + 1 7 T H G R A D E Q U E S T I O N F R O M 2 0 0 1 Think you figured out the answer? Watch as middle school math teacher Tom Canright explains the mathematical approach to solving these problems at www.latinschool.org/latinmagazine

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