Are You Smarter Than An 8th Grader?

Well for most of you reading this the answer for that would be "Yes.", but what if you were up against a room full of kids like this:

Not so sure now, are you, Smarty Pants? Huh? Is that your inferior quantitative skills I hear shaking in the background? Thought so. This past Saturday, the brightest 12-14 year old minds in the South Bay gathered for MathCounts chapter competition. I was there to pass out pencils and scratch paper, and most certainly not answer questions about the test. It wa about as fun as math competition could be for a spectator, but it did take me back to my days as a Mathlete. I think Jason and Mike will agree that the stop at Yo-Nuts and video games in the Purdue union were the highlight of our trips to chapter competition.

I could actually feel these kids' brains working that morning. It was really warm in the cafeteria during the three testing rounds, but as soon as they were over and the kids relaxed over lunch, I swear the temperature dropped 7-10 degrees. I am not making this up. It happened.

For the nerds out there, you can access the MathCounts Problem of the Week here, and for super math studs, the Wabash Mathematics Problem of the Fortnight here. That is all.












UPDATE: One of the schools I was proctoring was Magruder, which had me playing the theme song from the SNL "MacGruber" skits all morning long. And in no way was that a bad thing.
[MacGruber archive @ hilarious.net]

(ANOTHER) UPDATE: Volunteers also got free Aerospace t-shirts. Suck it, Anne!