Competition Will Prove Math Counts

The product (you remember--the answer to something times something else) of two consecutive page numbers is 18,360. What is the sum of those two pages?

These are the types of questions that will be racking the brains of 7th and 8th graders Saturday as youngsters from seven schools in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys gather at Cal State Northridge for the first round of the 12th annual MathCounts program.

The program, sponsored locally by the San Fernando Valley chapter of the California Society of Professional Engineers, is conducted nationwide at thousands of locations, all of them administering the same questions to participants.

The winners at this level, called the chapter level, advance to the state competition. Those winners, in turn, advance to the national competition to be held in Washington in May.

Last year, the team from Walter Reed Junior High School in North Hollywood, always tough contenders, took second place at the national competition.

Still, according to Norman Baron, a 12-year MathCounts organizer, success in the competition is not really the point of this program. Through the program, sponsors provide junior high schools with workbooks and study plans.

“It can only be good for students to learn to have fun with math,” Baron said. “Our main goal is to get students and teachers interested in learning and teaching this important subject.”

If the students actually participate in the competition, it is merely a bonus for them, he said.

The Society of Professional Engineers has a particular interest in sponsoring such activities, said Baron, who currently is a civil engineer working on the Metro Rail project.

“If we teach students to relate better to math, they will become more capable people and, down the line, we are creating even better engineers,” he said.

Other national sponsors of the program include NASA, the Intel Foundation and Texas Instruments Inc.

Twenty-eight of these Mathletes , as participants are called, from seven area schools will compete Saturday in three rounds of questions they will ponder individually and in groups.

Schools participating are the Buckley School, Sherman Oaks; La Mesa Junior High School, Canyon Country; John Muir Junior High School, Burbank; Oakwood Secondary School, North Hollywood; Placerita Junior High, Newhall; Walter Reed Junior High, North Hollywood, and Santa Clarita Christian School, Canyon Country.