2002 - 03

2002 - 03 was our inaugural year.  We weren't officially called the "Fibonaccians" yet!  We had 11 members in our club who made it through the whole year:

Topics we covered:

• dollars and sense ($ signs divided into segments)

• locker room problems

• divisibility by 2, 5, 10, 100

• unit fractions: ancient arithmetic

• squares and rectangles: the checkerboard problem

• motion problems: trains of thought

• cryptarithms

• multiplication patterns

• triangle tangle

Math Olympiad results:

This was the primary focus in the math club this year.  We practiced past Math Olympiad problems each week, and did the 5 contests that make up this competition.  This challenging competition is aimed at 4th to 6th graders.  Everyone did a great job.

Each of these students earned the additional distinction of scoring in the top 50% of all contestants worldwide.

Our top-scoring female student was Emma.

The Math Olympiads is both an individual and team competition.  Here are some team statistics:

Sub-team	Total number of questions in which that sub-team did better than the world average for that grade
our 6th graders	13 out of 25
our 5th graders	20 out of 25
our 4th graders (and younger)	4 out of 25

As you can tell by these stats, the Math Olympiads were very challenging for most of our 4th graders and younger.  But I am very pleased with the progress and perseverance I saw in each one.  I feel that despite the difficulty of the problems, the students benefited from being exposed to some higher-level concepts.  I encouraged them to stretch themselves beyond what they thought they could do, and to think creatively.  I suspect many of the parents got a mental workout, too! :)

AMC-8 results:

Several of our math clubbers and older siblings entered the AMC-8 contest in November.  This is a very difficult contest, aimed at 7th and 8th graders.

place in our club	Student
1st	Jonathan
2nd	Chris (big brother), Jeremy (tie)
3rd	Peter

Here are statistics on how some of our students did compared to other Georgians and the rest of the world:

Student	Grade level	Georgia ranking for student's grade	World ranking for student's grade	percentile
Jonathan	5th (he's actually a 3rd grader)	1st out of 11	62nd out of 1560	96.0%
Peter	5th	3rd out of 11	228th out of 1560	85.4%
Timothy	5th	7th out of 11	538th out of 1560	65.5%
Jeremy	6th	20th out of 156	1420th out of 14,707	90.3%
Philip	6th	89th out of 156	6426th out of 14,707	56.3%
Chris	8th	478th out of 1498	22,378th out of 85,351	73.8%

Awards Ceremony

We had a full turnout for our awards ceremony, with 14 adults and 27 children (including students, parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends).  Wow--what a feast everyone brought, including several very creative math-related snacks!  Our special guest Mr. Todd really encouraged the children to be all they can be; not compare themselves to one another; and to give glory to God in all that they do.  Each student received their awards, then we all enjoyed one another's company and the delicious food.

Well done, everyone!