Once again, ARML has come and gone. This year marks the 10th consecutive ARML that I’ve attended. It was really fun seeing old timers and meeting so many great kids for the first time. I even met a few really cool kids from Dalton and Horrace Mann! :) Of course, then there’s the usual suspects from Stuyvesant and Hunter… but we all know those schools suck ;)

NYC Math Team did very well this year, and placed third nationally. Taoran Chen from NYC Math team even took top honors at ARML, and placed first individually!

I of course, will always have a soft spot for Baltimore’s team, which once again improved significantly in its rankings under Raymond Cheong. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if Baltimore wins it all within the decade ;).

Florida also did very well, and I’m really happy to see Chenyu Lin kicking ass at ARML after all the work he’s put in!

Incidentally, I had written an earlier post about ARML’s financials being questionable. This year, ARML actually disclosed fairly detailed financial information to all the coaches and asked for approval. Personally, I still don’t think ARML is running as financially lean as it could (and some of its expenses are kind of odd), but I really appreciate its new efforts in increasing transparency. Given what I do, It’s probably true that I expect organizations to run much tighter ships than normal.

I’ve actually been thinking about making this year the last ARML that I attend, and quitting all math competition related endeavors by next year. This year’s ARML is definitely making my decision much harder….

High school students who compete in math team competitions have probably heard of the American Regions Math League, or ARML for short. Many states struggle to come up with enough funding to send their kids to this prestigious competition, so I decided to look through their tax forms to see how efficient this organization is. (All non-profit tax forms are available at guidestar free of charge). The below chart is what resulted from my analysis (note this is not all of ARML’s expenses, executive compensation and conference costs have been left out on purpose):

There are several things of note here.

1. How does the current arml.com cost $1,000 to develop and $215 a yr to maintain?
2. Granted ARML is not an easy competition to write, but does it really warrant an average of $5,000 annually to develop the competition? (That’s excluding the $2,800 paid to the head question writer annually.)
3. ARML claims to be an organization dedicated to its participants, then why is the amount dedicated to student awards so low in 2005? (2003: $11,171, 2004: $18,116, 2005: $7,566)

Outside of the purely quantitative data, I’m also increasingly annoyed at ARML’s board for making ARML a cesspool of commercial spam. At last year’s Penn State ARML award ceremony, some prizes were given alongside what amount to sales pitches for companies. If ARML is going to be TI’s lapdog, they should at least charge significantly more than a few calculators.

It is also infuriating to see teams spending significant amount of money just on traveling to one of three designated test sites. It seems like this year, two teams from Turkey will be participating in ARML via the web (news release here), why can’t teams from the US do that as well?

The American Mathematics Competitions, or AMC, has quietly amended its rules for calculator usage. (Incidentally, the AMC is undergoing a major overhaul of its website, check it out!)

Starting in 2008, no calculators will be allowed on the AMC 8 / 10 / 12.

I am not sure whether this would prompt similar rules changes for NYSML and ARML, but I expect the number of AIME qualifiers to drop noticeably next year. After all, I myself depended on the TI-89 quite a bit when I took the AMC exams!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kids who are turned off by math often say they don’t enjoy it, they aren’t good at it and they see little point in it. Who knew that could be a formula for success?

The nations with the best scores have the least happy, least confident math students, says a study by the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy.

Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence among math students don’t do as well in the subject, the study suggests. The results for the United States hover around the middle of the pack, both in terms of enjoyment and in test scores.

In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.

Click HERE for CNN’s full reporting.

This past weekend marked the successful culmination of another NYSML (New York State Mathematics League). During the opening ceremony this year, multiple speakers made references to Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat.

The premise of this book is that the information explosion that has happened in the last 10 years has transformed the business arena into a fast paced global free-for-all. While I agree with the premise of the book, and recommend it as a must read, I believe NYSML is actually a quintessential example of why the US will not be left behind in this global transformation.

I have been attending NYSML since I was 13, which makes the 2006 NYSML the 9th consecutive NYSML that I’ve attended. Over the course of these 9 years, I have made many great friends, received job offers, and even had bouts of romances because of NYSML. However, what has been most gratifying to me in the past 9 years is watching new groups of kids and coaches come to NYSML each year on an early Saturday morning, for no other reason than their passion and enthusiasm for mathematics.

As NYSML 2006 ended, and a new leadership team (including the hilariously witty George Reuter) is put in place; I am excited and relieved to see that even though the world is now flat, the US is still very much in the race.