While at some national competitions female contestants can feel the need to prove themselves to male peers, “at the Math Prize, we’re all girls, and we all understand what that’s like,” Wang said. After being ushered into the event hall, the participants were given 2½ hours to finish 20 challenging multistage math problems. The answers were reviewed by a panel of judges from MIT and the Advantage Testing Foundation. Celine Liang, 16, took the highest score at the competition — and the top prize of $29,300 — by correctly answering 17 out of the 20 questions. The junior at Saratoga High School in California was stunned. Liang competed in the two previous years, but “you don’t exactly come here to win,” she said. “A lot of people come here just to solve the problems. That’s what math people do, and it’s been great to meet other girls with the same interests.” At the awards ceremony, a Math Prize alumna shared her desire for female students to embrace mathematics as a creative field. Dina Katabi, an electrical engineering and computer science professor at MIT, gave the keynote speech. As the girls tapped their pencils and mouthed problems to themselves during the competition, the founder of an online school for enthusiastic mathematics students gave a presentation to parents. Richard Ruscyk, founder of the Art of Problem Solving, said showing girls interested in math that they are not alone is vital to getting them to continue in the field. For young women used to male-dominated math classes competitions, contestants said the Math Prize was a welcome change. “Most math competitions are mostly boys,” said 15-year-old Indumathi Parakash, a freshman in Sharon. “I felt like this was better. This shows that there are a lot of girls just as smart as they are.”
Jennifer Smith can be reached at jennifer.smith@globe.com.
43
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker