Living a Lie

[noimagination]

<p>

The math competitions that I’m talking is Mu Alpha Theta, and most of the public high schools in my city produce students who have placed nationally in those competitions. It doesn’t seem that hard to place especially when one can get a national award for compiling a good scrapbook that reflects one’s team.

The big-name math competitions that most competitive math programs seem to focus on are the AMC/AIME/USAMO and USAMTS, plus MathCounts at the middle-school level. A “scrapbook” has nothing to do with winning at that level - it’s more about being able to solve the assigned problems under pressure.

I also live in a college town, and many students have parents who are scientists and mathematicians, so the students have had a lot of parental help in being strong in math.

The same can be true of any activity. Kids whose parents are web designers may design websites as a “hobby”, good basketball players may have parents who played, etc.</p>