Students at the 20th annual Peninsula MathCounts competition. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Seeman)

A group of 112 middle school students from 15 local schools participated in the 20th annual Peninsula MathCounts competition held on Saturday, February 1, at SLAC. The students, teachers and volunteers appreciated the welcome they received from Emily Ball (PAO) and they were quite impressed with the facilities.

For the written portion of the nationwide competition, two individual rounds were followed by a team round where the students worked together to answer the questions in the time allotted. A ‘Jeopardy’ style competition followed lunch.

Twenty students from Nueva School in Hillsborough, Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School and Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto, Blach School in Los Altos and Bayside School in San Mateo advanced to the State Competition to be held in March at UC Davis.

MathCounts is a nationwide math coaching and competition program designed to improve math skills among U.S. middle school students through grassroots involvement. Over six million students have participated in the MathCounts program. MathCounts’ Founding Sponsors are the CNA Foundation, the National Society of Professional Engineers and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Volunteers act as coaches during the year and are needed as proctors and graders during the competition. The local competition was sponsored by Applied Biosystems. If you would like to be involved next year, please contact Nancy Seeman (Stanford U.) at seemanmj@stanford.edu.