one of 224 middle schoolers from around the country

Thu, 05/09/2024 - 8:30pm

Miles Bartke (Photo courtesy St. George School)

ST. GEORGE — Miles Bartke, an eighth grader at St. George School, will be heading to Washington, D.C. this weekend for prestigious middle school national math competition, the annual two-day Mathcounts.

The competition brings, “together the nation’s highest-achieving math students, which includes both a written exam and a live ‘bee’ style contest,” according to Mathcounts. This year, 224 middle school Mathletes will race against the clock and each other to answer challenging questions, such as:

How many six-digit positive integers containing six distinct nonzero digits are divisible by 99? (Ans: 576 integers)

Alana can make a tutu in 40 minutes. Spencer takes 50% longer. Working together, how many minutes does it take them to make 20 tutus? (Ans.: 480 minutes)

The national competition follows state competitions, when more than 33,000 students from almost 4,000 schools participated in local math meets. The National Champion (Countdown Round Winner) determined May 13 will win a $20,000 Donald G. Weinert Scholarship.

Miles will join four other Maine representatives, three from Falmouth and one from Portland. They have met in-person but once at the state meet, but have been practicing together on Zoom in advance of the D.C. competition.

The competition consists of three rounds with the written competition: the Sprint round, Target round, and Team round. The participants will not be allowed a calculator in the Sprint round — those problems are slightly easier — but they will use a calculator if they so choose on the more difficult Target and Team rounds.

For Miles, math is a way of life. He has a natural inclination to solving problems, and has been taking taking math classes above his grade level since he started school.

In fifth grade, he was taking high school math classes, “which has greatly increased my enjoyment of the subject, as I am challenged much more than I could be taking math at my age level.”

This year, he is taking AP Calculus.

“I use both algebra and geometry frequently throughout this class, as well as a lot of skills specific to calculus,” he said. “I tend to enjoy algebra more, because I like the way that you rearrange a very complicated equation into a much simpler form.”

St. George School mathematics teacher Amy Palmer takes students annually to Maine Mathcounts meets, but this year is different, with Miles representing the state at the national Mathcounts competition.

“I've been working with Miles in math since he was in second grade,” said Palmer. “He and I worked one on one for math in second and third grade, and then in fourth grade he went to middle school math classes.”

When Miles was in fifth grade, Palmer drove him to Oceanside High School in Rockland, where he took honors algebra and geometry classes as an independent study.

In sixth grade, Miles was taking honors algebra 2, and in seventh grade, it was honors pre-calculus; this year, AP calculus.

“Mathcounts is a middle school competition, so he has had to practice math he learned several years ago to make sure he still remembers it,” said Palmer. “There's no calculus problems in the competition. He sometimes practices with our math team. I usually give him different problems to do, but when I don't, he is really good at explaining math concepts to other students.”

For Miles, the beauty of math lies in its simplicity.

“Although advanced math seems very complicated, if you don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the complicated formulas and variables, it all makes sense and is simple,” he said. “Another thing I like about it is that everything in math can be proved.”

Next year he will be in high school, and plans to keep forging ahead with math, learning as much as he can. He will be taking early college math classes in his junior and senior year of high school.

“It has been so much fun working on math problems with him throughout the years,” said Palmer. “He has an innate curiosity that makes solving problems seem like a fun mystery to solve. We bounce ideas back and forth to figure them out. At this point, he teaches me more than I teach him, but it's super fun. I will miss him next year.”

The feeling is mutual, with Miles grateful for the help of his teacher.

“I have had Zoom practices with my team weekly to practice Team round problems, and we have lots of practice to do for the other rounds also throughout the course of the rest of the week,” he said. “Ms. Palmer has also been very helpful throughout the whole process, providing lots of extra help and support.”

Mathcounts itself involves students in grades six through eight, “because middle school is a critical juncture, with a student’s attitudes about STEM in eighth grade predicting their likelihood to pursue a STEM career,” the nonprofit said.

Funding for Mathcounts comes primarily from RTX, U.S. Department of DefenseTexas Instruments Incorporated and Art of Problem Solving, STEM, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman Foundation, the National Society of Professional Engineers, 3Mgives.

It was was founded in 1983 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and CNA Insurance.

Good luck in D.C., Miles!