and Words
Well I’m an axe grinder
Pile driver
Mama says
That I never never mind her
Got no brains
I’m insane
The teacher says
That I’m one big pain
I’m like a laser
Six-string razor
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I wake obscenely early on a Saturday morning; it’s maybe 5:30am. I get a quick breakfast and gather my things to head to school. Sometimes my mom drops me off, but today I ride my bicycle to school. As I leave my house, there’s a chill in the air, and fog covers everything. The streetlights I pass create a cone of light, more visible with the fog; they illuminate the roads as I spin over the sidewalks. I next ride over the bridge over the Florida’s Turnpike as I approach my high school, South Plantation. Finally, I lock my bike on the familiar fence between the faculty lot and the football field. Today, I represent my school in competition.
I walk to the familiar rented vans that will take us to the competition. My teacher, already there, still needs to gather some equipment from the school. I help her as we navigate the different hallways and the alarms. The school is hauntingly quiet this morning. I gather what we needed and proceed to load it onto the van; we can fit most of it under the seats. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for others to arrive. Slowly they trickle in; they are mostly familiar faces. We meticulously go through a checklist on a clipboard as we account for everyone. There are two vans today as they carry us off to a far-away Floridian city (or more accurately high school), familiar only by name. Once ready, we will all climb in and embark on our adventure.
As the ride starts, most of us students are comatose. The sun rises over the horizon as I look out the window. Meanwhile, I put on my headphones to my WM-30 Sony Walkman. Among the handful tapes with me, I find just the right tune; I choose this. I’m not sure what ‘Metal Health’ has to do with competition, but it consistently motivates me. Kevin DuBrow’s singing and sometimes screaming precisely fits my mood this morning. However, the earliness of the hour overwhelms me, and I too succumb to slumber.
Most of the sleeping wake upon exiting the freeway; the remaining are stirred awake upon arrival. We collectively strategize, work out the individual teams, and get registered. Today, I’ll be competing on three events, each with their own nuances:
- Trigonometry Individual
- Trigonometry Team
- Computer Programming Team
The individual competitions are simply a multiple-choice knowledge test, and they’re conducted similarly independent of area of study. It consists of 25 questions, each correct answer awards you 4 points for a possible perfect score of 100. Unanswered questions will get you zero points. However, they penalize you for each incorrect answer by -1 point. If you can eliminate some of those choices, then you may guess. Otherwise, it’s designed so that if you were to guess on everything, you’d average close to zero. While the range is -25 to 100, if you do absolutely nothing, you’ll get zero.
We once had one of our football athletes join us, who knows? He might’ve been a mathematical genius. However, he scored -13, for the individual portion. I’m speculating that he wasn’t exceptional at math. Not only did he flat out guess for most of it, but he also guessed exceptionally poorly. Therefore, he didn’t return.
We are disciplined about how we compete. Not only do we abstain from guessing randomly, but we meticulously document our work in the test paper and circle the answer that we submitted on the scantron sheet. Finally, we compare answers after the tests and aspire to correct those mistakes.
For the team competition, a group of up to four collaborate on a problem together. We’d scribble our answer on a scrap of paper and submit it. They awarded points for correct answers based on how quickly we submitted our response. Points were split by which minute the correct answer was submitted, and time ran out at four minutes. The collective team scores were the sum of the individual scores and the team score. That -13 really hurt.
The mathematics part of the competition rewarded accuracy. That is, everyone got the same set of questions (whether individual or team setting) and they awarded points on those questions.
They conduct the computer programming contests differently. Where the math contests rewarded accuracy, the computer contests valued speed. Our school normally had one or two teams of up to four. Every team would be handed the same set of simple one sentence description of a program starting with WAP (Write A Program). Some typical examples were:
- WAP to exchange the value of two variables, without using a third.
- WAP to calculate the value of pi, given that pi/4 = 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + …
They grouped the mini programs by number of points awarded; the more complex programs yielded more points. With each contest, the list of programs was far too long for any one team to implement them all. Each team huddled around one computer; one person was the designated typist. The remaining members meticulously scanned the list of mini programs and coordinated which ones each would tackle, so our teammates wouldn’t duplicate effort. The typist may also tackle the occasional simpler program but generally was the one who ran them. Once completed, a proctor would verify that the program worked correctly and awarded points.
We conducted the entire competition by passing scraps of paper with hastily written BASIC programs back and forth. Since there too many to implement, we aimed to simply finish as many of them as we could as quickly as we could. However, we evaluated if this tougher program was worth twice as much as that simpler one. We subsequently huddled around an Apple IIe with a tiny monochrome monitor and programmed to the BASIC interpreter.
Although we often mixed the teams between competitions, we won pretty regularly. We were all good.
I was a poor student during freshman year. My Algebra teacher, ironically one of these dedicated teachers drove us to the corners of Florida, called me out one day. After ditching school three days on a particular week, she announced, “Mr. Wong, you’re out of school more often than you’re in school.” I managed to right that ship starting my sophomore year, both in attendance and performance. I had fewer absences in the subsequent three years than that particular week alone.
If you plan your classes appropriately, you can take AP Calculus in high school. It’s five years of mathematics; the typical way to do it is to double up Algebra 2 and Geometry. I neglected to do that. I later asked if I may instead double up on Algebra 2 and Trigonometry as a Junior. The response that I got from the lone Trig teacher was, “There are elements of one class that you’ll need on the other. I wouldn’t do it unless you’re a mathematical genius.” I backed down.
I finally took Calculus in college, and it did not impede my career as an engineer. Though years later, I reflect back on that conversation I think I would’ve done just fine doubling up those two classes. While I didn’t have the ego, maybe I should have responded, “Well, I am indeed a mathematical genius.” 😎