Problem Solving & Contest Training

California Teams Win 7 Prestigeous Awards in 2006 Po Leung Kuk Primary Mathematics World Contest Held in Hong Kong

 SAN JOSE, CALIF. – August 12, 2006 --Ewa Garg, Director of MathEdge, led two teams consisting of eight students from the Bay Area ranging from 5^th  to 7^th grade. The two teams, Silicon Valley USA and California MathEdge, were invited to compete in the Tenth Po Leung Kuk Primary Mathematics World Contest (PMWC) held from July 17^th to 21^st in Hong Kong. Last year, the MathEdge team participated for the first time and won 3 awards. Continuing last year’s success, the teams won seven awards, two team and five individual awards.

Competing in the 10^th PMWC were forty-eight teams of about 200 students from various countries across the globe such as Mexico, Australia, Bulgaria, China, India, Japan, South Africa, etc. The participation in this contest was by invitation only.

Abhijit Pujare (7^th grader at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino), Patrick Yang (6^th grader at Harker School in San Jose), Revanth Kosaraju (6^th grader at Harker School in San Jose), and Ramya Rangan (6^th grader at Harker School in San Jose) represented team California MathEdge.

Archit Kulkarni (7^th grader at Rogers Middle School in San Jose), Alexander Ma (6^th grader at Miller Middle School in San Jose), Elaine Tang (7^th grader at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino), and Lexing Tong (5^th grader at J.F. Smith Elementary School in Evergreen) comprised team Silicon Valley USA.

Both teams were phenomenal in the contest. Although tied for 1^st place in score, team California MathEdge won the 1^st Runner Up Po Leung Cup award after losing in tiebreaks. Team Silicon Valley USA won the Merit award in the team competition contest.

In the individual competition, students Revanth Kosaraju and Patrick Yang received 2^nd  place honor while Alexander Ma, Archit Kulkarni and Ramya Rangan received 3^rd  place award. The remaining three students, Abhijit Pujare, Elaine Tang,  and Lexing Tong also performed exceptionally, only one point short of an individual award.

The above students were selected from two rounds of tryout competitions. The first tryout was held in February with 102 students (ranging from 3^rd to 7^th graders) from 52 different Bay Area schools taking the qualifying test. From that, ten students (the top 10%) were selected and were given twelve weeks of training. Besides the 8 students mentioned above, Amanda Chen (7^th grader at Chaboya Middle School in Evergreen of San Jose) and Matthew Lin (5^th grader at J.F. Smith Elementary School in Evergreen of San Jose) were also selected for training.

A second test was administered in April to select the final eight contestants. For these students, all expenses (except airfare) for five days including room, board, and local tours in Hong Kong were covered. This was a unique opportunity for the elementary school and junior high students to have an academic and cultural exchange with children around the world.

Doing well in Math competitions requires sound reasoning, logical thinking and most important problem solving skills which are different from the straight forward computational math done in school. Hence, MathEdge, which specializes in problem solving and competitive math training, believes in focusing on the entire problem solving process instead of only getting the right answers.

Front left to right: Lucy Lu(assistant coach), Elaine Tang, Ramya Rangan, Patrick Yang, Lexing Tong, Ewa Garg (coach)
Back left to right: Cheng Yung Ma (assistant coach), Revanth Kosaraju, Abhijit Pujare, Alexander Ma, Archit Kulkarni