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'll be participating in the first national contest of Who Wants to Be a Mathematician, which will take place Thursday, January 14 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco. The top prize is $5000 for the winning student and $5000 for the math department of that student's school.

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. The deadline for the January 2010 competition has passed. 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), who will be giving a presentation to the qualifying contestants. In addition to the cash prizes, there will also be 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 ).