Calvin Team Wins Math Contest

December 5, 2005 == MEDIA ADVISORY

For the seventh time in 12 years, a student team from Calvin College has won
the Michigan Autumn Take-Home (MATH) Challenge.

The three-person team composed of seniors John Engbers and Phil Boonstra and
junior Nathan Strong took first place in the annual, three-hour exam. There
were 59 teams from 21 schools who participated in the fall 2005 challenge.

Engbers is a graduate of Grand Rapids Christian High, Boonstra of Calvin
Christian High School in Escondido, California, and Strong of Forest Hills
Central High School.

The MATH Challenge is a team-oriented, 10-problem exam that tests its takers
in several areas of math expertise. Each year, the exam is mailed to
participating colleges, each of which sponsors one or more teams of up to three
persons.

"The most challenging problems are usually the word problems," says Boonstra,
a mathematics and political science major. "They give you what looks like a
really difficult problem, but there's usually some subtle trick involved that
makes it fall into place really easily. So the challenge is more based in
finding that trick rather than solving the actual problem, which is easy after
you see what trick you need to use."

Calvin previously won the MATH Challenge from 1994-1997 and then again in 2000
and 2001.

For the full story see
http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/math_challenge.htm

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Received on Mon Dec 5 13:00:07 2005