On Friday, April 14, the Aragon Math Club hosted 83 middle schoolers from five different schools to participate in the yearly Aragon Math Marathon. This year, the middle schoolers came from schools including Abbott, Bayside, Borel, Bowditch and Crocker. The marathon was split into two individual rounds and one team round.
As preparation for the event began in November of last year, Junior Frank Liu says, “So basically, all of the problems we have are completely student written. So what we have besides the Aragon Math club [writing questions] are people who will volunteer to write problems for the exam. What we do is we work together as a team to put together these problems to form three different rounds.”
He adds, “What we [wanted] to do this year … different than last year is that we [wanted] to increase coordination.” In order to increase coordination, the Aragon Math Club started sending math problems to middle schools prior to the event. Liu explains the process, saying, “We mail the problems to the middle schoolers to do and they mail them back to us … We are making the middle schoolers more satisfied with the quality of the problems and coordination of the event.”
Math Club Treasurer Meiling Thompson points out the opportunity for middle schoolers that the Aragon Math Marathon provides. She says, “I think that it gives them an opportunity to jump into competitive math, and see what it is like to compete with others on a competitive level.”
Mayank Patil, a seventh grader from Bowditch Middle School, says, “Competitions like this only happen once in awhile.”
Allyson Chan, a seventh grader from Bowditch Middle Schools discusses the challenge that the marathon provided.
She concludes, “I liked that we got to challenge ourselves to do complicated questions with our friends. They were challenging but fun.”
