Stuyvesant Math Team Hosts the Downtown Mathematics Invitational

The Stuyvesant math team hosted its annual Downtown Mathematics Invitational (DMI) competition on December 7, with 34 high school math teams from across the city coming to Stuyvesant to compete in the day-long contest. The Dalton School’s Tigers came in first, the Spence School’s Gold team came in second, and the Trinity School’s A team came in third. Longzhen Chen, a senior from Francis Lewis High School, got the highest individual score with a perfect 10 on the individual contest.

The competition began with a 40-minute team round, where teams had to work together to answer 10 questions. Then, there was a 70-minute power round, where teams had to learn a new math topic and solve eight related questions, most of which required proofs; this year’s DMI power round topic was Farey Sequences. After a one-hour lunch break, students participated in an individual round, where they were confronted with five problem sets, each containing two questions to be answered in 10 minutes.

Afterward, teams participated in a 75-minute marathon round, inspired by math competitions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University, or the Harvard–MIT Mathematics Tournament and the Princeton University Mathematics Competition, respectively. Each team started the round with two questions and received a new question every time it turned in a previous question to the front panel. All the teams were situated in the auditorium, and scores were shown live so teams could see their scores and ranking.

Finally, all students who answered eight or nine questions correctly in the individual round competed in a tiebreaker round to determine the second to 10th place rankings. Chen, the only contestant to get all 10 questions right, did not have to compete in the tiebreakers.

This is Stuyvesant’s third year holding the DMI, which is run entirely by the Stuyvesant math team’s coaches and students. The questions are written and submitted by students through an online form, while the competition itself is graded and proctored by math team members.

Seniors and math team captains Nancy Kuang and Kimi Sun played an integral role in organizing the event. Sun was in charge of organizing the graders, ensuring that contests were scored and correctly entered into the mass spreadsheet, and writing the power round.

Meanwhile, Kuang communicated with and organized all the teams, which she found very rewarding. “My favorite part was actually helping out with organization, because there’s a huge difference between being a proctor and volunteering for the events and actually helping out with planning everything and submitting problems. So to be able to work with [sophomore] Rishabh [Das] after school and stay after—that [was] nice,” Kuang said.

Math teacher Brian Sterr, who oversees and manages the competition, attributes the inspiration for the DMI to the South Brooklyn Invitational Math Competition, a competition initiated by math teacher and coach Fred Galli from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. “Mr. Galli wanted to start a competition in Brooklyn, and specifically wanted to start a competition for the local schools in the area, so they started their competition first, and then, they had been doing it for five or six years,” Sterr said.

Stuyvesant also hosts the DMI due to a lack of local high school level math competitions in NYC. “Unlike middle school, there aren’t many competitions in the city [for high school]. In middle school, everyone goes to MathCounts, or Pi5, or one of these things, where you can actually go and see people from other schools. So we’re just trying to expand that at the high school level with a competition in Manhattan because there’s already one in Brooklyn,” Sterr said.

Sun agrees that the magnitude of student participation in the DMI shows how Stuyvesant is able to expand high schoolers’ opportunities to attend math competitions. In fact, his favorite part of the DMI was the variety of schools represented on Saturday. “[My favorite part was] just how many people showed up. A lot of the schools [I had] never heard of [came], and I guess they aren’t that focused on math, but I’m happy they brought teams,” he said.

Bronx Science High School math team coach Kevin Cheung agrees that the DMI is crucial in allowing more students the opportunity to compete and meet other students who are also passionate about math. “[The DMI] is based on a model that is used on the state and the national level, […] but [those competitions are open] for a very exclusive few. Not many people actually get to compete in those contests. The only way to [compete in these competitions is by being a part of] NYC math team,” he said. “Stuy[vesant] [holding DMI] is important because it exposes [math competitions] to more people. You don’t necessarily have to be a member of the NYC team to compete in the contest here. This is open to everyone.”

By creating a high school level math competition accessible to students all across the city, the New York City Math Team (NYCMT) is also able to scout new talent. “It gives us the opportunity to find some students who are excelling in math team from other schools [who] might deserve an invitation to the NYCMT,” Sterr said.

As for next year, Kuang acknowledges that the questions need to be easier. “We don’t have a very good idea of how well others from others schools will do. We also don’t know which teams they will send, because [some] teams send their top teams, other schools send their second or third best teams, and there are also some schools who send freshman teams,” Kuang said.

Students who partook in the competition agree, saying the competition was more difficult this year. Neil Shrotri, a student competing from Trinity School, a private school in Manhattan, said last year’s competition was “easier, [...] but in terms of problems, this year is probably better.”

Akash Kumar, another student from Trinity, said, “Their problems in comparison to last year [were] definitely harder, but last year, I think a lot of people were acing a ton of rounds, so it creates a better separation between teams.”

Nevertheless, students felt the competition was run well. “I think logistically both [DMI and PUMaC] were run pretty well. Everything was organized well, [and] there were very few moments of confusion,” said Helena, a junior from Horace Mann, a private school in the Bronx.

Cheung agrees that the DMI was well executed; however, he hopes to see more students attend. “Overall, the contest [was] done very well, and the fact that it’s done by students and written by students—I think that fact is also quite nice,” Cheung said. “Maybe the only thing that could be improved is a greater presence, as in more people should know about this. [...] This is supposed to be an entry level contest to show what math contests are all about, and in order to do that we want to try to get this to everyone.”

Students, both from Stuyvesant and from competing teams, were content with the competition overall. “I’m happy—even though we made the questions too hard, people were still happy they came. I think that’s more important than doing any single question or any particular round,” Sun said.