<p>I think I mentioned in earlier threads that my son attended the MathPath</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mathpath.org%5B/url%5D">http://www.mathpath.org</a> </p>
<p>summer mathematics program this year. Now that he is safely back home, I'll post a review of the program for reference use by other parents. </p>
<p>First the global evaluation: I asked my son if he would recommend MathPath to his friends, and he said, in a very enthusiastic voice, "Definitely." I asked him if he would go back again, and he said yes. I asked him if MathPath was harder than CTY, and he said, "Oh, yeah, TEN times harder." He noted that much CTY homework is mandatory, at least theoretically, while all MathPath homework is voluntary, but the MathPath homework is so interesting that most participants wanted to do most of it, even though it was impossibly too much to finish.</p>
<p>MathPath selects participants by an open-ended application quiz requesting mathematical solutions and proofs of the correctness of the solutions for various problems. MathPath also asks for letters of recommendation from a teacher (my son asked his accelerated math program teacher to write that) and from an unrelated adult who knows the applicant well. Both elements of the application package are considered in deciding who gets to attend. A 25 July 2005 newspaper article in the Colorado Springs Gazette</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1309273&secid=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1309273&secid=1</a> </p>
<p>reported that MathPath 2005 had about 400 applications, and 68 applicants were accepted for attendance, of which 66 actually attended. </p>
<p>The list price of MathPath is about at the industry standard level of $1,000 per week for an academic summer program: namely, $3,500 list price for four weeks of "camp" on a residential college campus. There are automatic reductions of list price for families below the highest income range, and MathPath provides a fundraising kit for parents who desire to raise money from friends and other supporters which we found to be surprisingly effective. Students who have third-party financial support (e.g., from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development Young Scholars program or the Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars Program) may be able to apply that support to MathPath attendance as well.</p>
<p>I attended the first twenty-four hours of MathPath after driving across the Great Plains to bring my son to camp. Some other parents were there from various parts of the country, including a few parents with whom I had previous online or in-person acquaintance. Most students flew in as unaccompanied minors, many of them in fairly sizeable groups on the same flight. The first-day procedures were focused primarily on ensuring the safe arrival of all students. The parents who were at MathPath had much time to commiserate with one another about the difficulty of finding appropriate educational opportunities for their children.</p>
<p>The first day of the MathPath program was WONDERFUL. George Rubin Thomas, Ph. D., the founder of MathPath, lectured on a proof that the graph of the solution set of a linear equation is a straight line, using an interesting proof with lemmas involving determinants, and Professor Glen Van Brummelen gave an opening talk on the history of mathematics and then criticized Dr. Thomas's proof because of one gap in the reasoning. Professor Paul Zeitz, a member of the very first United States team to the International Mathematical Olympiad and coach of the 1994 "dream team" that gained perfect scores of all six participants, spoke on the difficulty of mathematics, pointing out that most contest problems are solved in minutes or hours, but most professional mathematical research takes weeks, months, or even years. He wrote</p>
<p>STUPID</p>
<p>on the blackboard, because he said the human brain is not well suited to doing high-level mathematics, and most mathematicians feel stupid much of the time, and then wrote</p>
<p>IGNORANT</p>
<p>to point out that often people faced with a mathematical problem don't even know where to begin. He said MathPath would try to work on the second problem, that of ignorance, but that the students should always be prepared to face the first problem, that of feeling stupid while trying to solve a problem.</p>
<p>I left the program to return home feeling very confident that my son and the other children were in very good hands. I was very gratified to receive phone calls from my son approximately daily--this degree of communication with families is strongly encouraged by MathPath, rather than being discouraged as it is in many other summer programs. I am told that my son also managed to write a few letters out to people in other states during the program. He was very busy with math, math, and more math.</p>
<p>Daily lectures to the whole camp included such topics as group theory, history of mathematics, hyperbolic geometry, graph theory, projective geometry (taught by Professor Robin Hartshorne of Berkeley!), solving Rubik's cube, and many other topics. Problem-solving sessions in smaller groups involved learning much about number theory, combinatorics, probability, Euclidean geometry, trigonometry, and other staple topics of problem-solving competitions. My son found the lectures on the deeper, less contest-oriented topics to be the most interesting. He especially liked the two-lecture series near the end of the program on the Banach-Tarski paradox, taught by Professor Zeitz. A former coach of a MATHCOUNTS national champion was one of several teachers who took turns presenting a problem of the day. Quite a few different students would solve the problem of each day, with the best student solution winning a prize--typically a Binary Arts game. I have heard from another parent that several CTY alumni at MathPath this year agree with my son's assessment that MathPath is much harder than the CTY math courses--and also much more interesting because of that.</p>
<p>The students had other talents besides math. One student tried to find out what would happen to a Rubik's cube if it was microwaved. It smoked and flew apart, to the considerable delight on onlookers. My son told me one day by phone, very excited, that he had been playing chess with a boy who is the fourth-best player in the world in his age group. Other students regularly practiced music or ping pong. My son played soccer nearly every evening. Dr. Thomas, at age fifty-eight, is an AVID soccer player who sponsors a soccer team in his home village in India, and my son was especially delighted whenever he could find a move to beat him. Many of the comments other students put into my son's MathPath yearbook refer to his skill as a soccer fullback.</p>
<p>Different students had different favorite buddies, but in general most of the students seemed to get along quite well. Usually the students ate meals with the other students in their counselor groups. (There was one counselor group with two woman counselors for the thirteen girl students, and five counselor groups with one man counselor each for the fifty-three boy students.) Some of the parents I met at the program told me that their children had limited social skills--some of the students appeared to have autism spectrum behaviors--but the students seemed friendly and polite to me, and seemed to be interacting with one another well, especially at the end of camp, when the main lecture rooms were LOUD with the sound of students talking to one another until the lectures began.</p>
<p>At the end of camp my whole family drove out to Colorado Springs to pick up my son. One parent I met at MathPath, who has considerable education in mathematics, commented in a whisper to me during the last history of mathematics lecture, "Wouldn't you have liked to have had a class like this at the same age?" Oh, yes, I would have. I especially like MathPath for its showing students deep, interesting mathematical topics that are not only not part of the standard secondary curriculum, but not even part of the standard university curriculum, but which are certainly topics every well-educated mathematician is glad to know.</p>
<p>Maybe some of my other three children, or even all of them, will go to MathPath someday. I would definitely recommend applying to any young person who wants to have a truly delightful mathematical and social experience with other young people who like math. (Note to CC parents reading this: MathPath is for MIDDLE-SCHOOL-AGE children. Older children may like the rather different program founded earlier by Dr. Thomas, MathCamp</a>.) I will be happy to answer specific questions parents have about the MathPath program. Thanks to Dr. Thomas and his colleagues for putting together a great residential summer program in math.</p>
<p>Any questions?</p>