Last Updated: 11/7/11

The AMATYC Math Contest at CCSF

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Page Contents

• Time/Date/Room for Next Contest Exam at CCSF
• Brief Overview of the AMATYC Math Contest
• Contest Preparation Workshops at CCSF
• Links to Math Contest Practice Problem Sites

Date/Time/Room for Next Contest Exam at CCSF

The Round #1 exam for the 2011-2012 Academic Year will be held on:

Date: Friday, March 9

Time: 2:20-3:30pm (for alternate time, see details below^**)

Room: To be arranged

NOTE: Participants have exactly 60 minutes to work on the exam. It takes about 10 minutes to distribute the exams and read through the instructions, so participants should plan to be present from 2:20-3:30pm. You can have a look now at the exam instructions and answer sheet. At the beginning of each contest exam, we'll read through the instructions and you'll fill in the student information on the answer sheet.

** Students who have class from 2:00-3:00 PM can arrange to take the contest exam from 3:00-4:10 PM, please contact Aaron Schusteff for details.

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Brief Overview of the AMATYC Math Contest

The AMATYC "Student Math League" Contest is a math contest held each year at community colleges nationwide. It consists of two one-hour exams. At CCSF, the first exam is typically given in October and the second exam is given in March. Each exam consists of 20 multiple choice questions covering precalculus material (e.g. algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and statistics/probability). Examples of past exams can be downloaded (as PDF files) from this AMATYC webpage. [Note: You'll need the free Adobe Acrobat software to read these files.] Various contest scholarships and prizes are awarded, among them:

• A $3000 scholarship to an accredited 4-year college or university for the highest scoring participant nationwide. This scholarship is provided by AMATYC.
• Three scholarship prizes of values up to $500 awarded for the three highest scoring contestants from a northern California community college. These scholarships are provided by CMC^3 (California Mathematics Council-Community Colleges), which is a professional society of community college math teachers in Northern California. In recent years a number of CCSF students have been awarded such scholarships (ranging from $200 to $500).
• AMATYC awards various prizes (e.g. books, plaques, etc.) to the top ten participants nationwide and to members of the 1st place team. (The five highest scoring students among a college's participants comprises the college's "team". In recent years, CCSF's contest teams have repeatedly placed among the top 10 schools nationwide and the CCSF team earned first place in the 2002-2003 academic year.)

All CCSF students are welcome to participate. No special registration is required --- all an interested student needs to do is come to the contest room at the announced time on the contest date. Students are also permitted to bring and use any scientific or graphics calculator that does not have a QWERTY (i.e. typewriter) keyboard.

Note, however, that students who have already earned a two-year college degree (or higher) are not eligible to compete for official awards.

For More Information

If you'd like to learn more about the contest, you can:

• read this scanned info sheet (53 KB) from a few years back (or the same document as a PDF file (63 KB)).
• browse the official AMATYC "Student Math League" Contest Rules webpage

• Michael Greenberg (Batmale 361)
• Thomas Hu (Batmale 716)
• Renee Liu (Batmale 768)
• Aaron Schusteff (Batmale 730)

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Contest Preparation Workshops at CCSF

During the pre-contest workshops we'll briefly discuss how the contest works, and then look at problems from previous contest exams and discuss solutions and strategies to help prepare students for the upcoming contest exam.

During the post-contest meeting we'll:

• Discuss solutions to problems from the recent contest exam;
• Return contest participant's tests, answer sheets, and scratch work;
• Introduce members of the CCSF Math Department's Math Contest Committee...who will be available to help you prepare for the Round #2 exam next March.

  [ Page Contents | Math Dept Home | A. Schusteff Home ]

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  Links to Math Contest Practice Problem Sites

• Your first "best resource" for preparing for the contest is to take a look at some of the sixteen previous AMATYC exams (with answer keys).

For other potential practice problems see:

• The Math Forum "Math Puzzle" Links: A selection of links to math puzzle/problems sites with a variety of levels.

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