Who Wants to Be a Mathematician National Contest

In the AMS game Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, high school students compete for cash and prizes by answering multiple choice mathematics questions. Meet the 10 contestants who participated in the first national contest of Who Wants to Be a Mathematician on Thursday, January 14 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco. The top prize of $5000 was won by Evan O'Dorney of Danville, CA, who also won $5000 for the Berkeley Math Circle.

Photos from the 2010 contest (left, above, and below) by E. David Lauria.

Contestants were selected based on scores on the national qualifying test--which like previous Who Wants to Be a Mathematician events had questions from algebra, geometry, trigonometry, probability, combinatorics, history of math, etc., but not calculus. Information about the 2011 competition (with qualifying in the fall of 2010) will be posted here in the summer of 2010.

Partial support of the event comes from a National Science Foundation Distinguished Teaching Scholar's grant, held by Ken Ono (University of Wisconsin). In addition to the cash prizes, there were also prizes donated by: Texas Instruments, Maplesoft Inc., John Wiley & Sons, and the AMS. The game is a program of the AMS Public Awareness Office and was developed by Mike Breen (AMS Public Awareness Officer) and Bill Butterworth (DePaul University ).