<p>Hello, I've been practicing a lot for the upcoming Mu Alpha Theta competition at the state convention, but I can't seem to raise my scores. Every time I take a practice test, the ones I miss are really obscure, so even after learning how to solve them, it never helps as I don't see them again. I am wondering if there is a general prep/text book for Mu Alpha Theta I can use to help me learn the general technique to tackle problems so that I can get the more obscure questions right without having to know the specific steps to solve each of them. I've tried using the Art of Problem Solving books, but 95% of what is taught in them don't apply to what I see at the competitions. I am in the Theta/Algebra II division and I don't have a math coach / tutor or anything; when I'm stuck on a problem I ask a senior at school.</p>
<p>Any help would be appreciated, sorry if this post is poorly worded. Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I didn’t even know Mu Alpha Theta had competitions and i’m president :x</p>
<p>I can’t advise you specifically on MAT questions but perhaps try looking at some AMC/similar questions to just jog your thinking.</p>
<p>I’ve practiced for the AMC/AIME and took the tests, but those questions are completely different from Mu Alpha Theta. e.g.</p>
<p>AMC:
How many ways can you rearrange the letters of MATHEMATICS such that the first two letters in each arrangement will be vowels?</p>
<p>Mu Alpha Theta:
A = Distance between i + 5 and 8i + 3
B = Distance between 3i + 6 and -2i
C = Distance between -2 and 6i - 9
What is A/B + C?</p>
<p>In other words, there is not much overlap between the kinds of questions asked in each competition.</p>
<p>I don’t want to sound rude or condescending, but to be honest I wouldn’t consider that Mu Alpha Theta problem to really be a math competition problem: it’s a completely standard complex numbers problem. If you know how to do it, you just do it. Math competition problems are supposed to be nonstandard: there’s supposed to be something different about the problem that requires you to apply problem-solving techniques. If you want to give me some more examples of what you’re trying to learn to solve I might be able to help better, but for the problem you listed a treatment of complex numbers (usually in precalculus I believe) should cover it.</p>
<p>(To be fair that particular AMC problem isn’t very interesting either if you’ve had practice with counting combinations but at least you have to do a little bit of work to solve it. 
)</p>
<p>If you have more questions about this or there’s something I can clarify feel free to ask!</p>
<p>That was just to show the type of problem that is in Mu Alpha Theta, and it was a condensed version of it aswell, I believe the actual one was something like:</p>
<p>a = Distance between <complex number=“”> and <complex number=“”>
b = Distance between <complex number=“”> and <complex number=“”>
c = Distance between <complex number=“”> and <complex number=“”>
D = Area of triangle bound by line segments above</complex></complex></complex></complex></complex></complex></p>
<p>And that was one of the ones that were easy. Check floridamao.org’s Test Bank to see what all the questions are like.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link; I looked at some of the questions. (2014 February Algebra II Individual to be specific) I agree that the styles are somewhat different: to me, it seems that many of the MAT questions don’t require as much prerequisite knowledge as say the AMC competitions. I do think that for questions 3, 6, 8, 18, and 29 knowledge from AoPS Volume II would be helpful.</p>
<p>I would personally encourage you to try studying for the AMC tests, as it is essentially the main US math competition. The problems are good quality, and colleges are interested if you do well. Plus there are lots of resources for studying for them. Even if you only want to do well on MAT I think that these problems would help you. In any case the best way to learn is just to try solving lots of problems. If you tried a problem for a while (probably about an hour for these types of problems) and you still can’t get it, look at the solution, and see if there was anything in the problem that could have pointed you trying that.</p>
<p>If you have some questions about how to solve specific problems you can message me and I’ll see if I can help.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link; I looked at some of the questions. (2014 February Algebra II Individual to be specific) I agree that the styles are somewhat different: to me, it seems that many of the MAT questions don’t require as much prerequisite knowledge as say the AMC competitions. I do think that for questions 3, 6, 8, 18, and 29 knowledge from AoPS Volume II would be helpful.</p>
<p>I would personally encourage you to try studying for the AMC tests, as it is essentially the main US math competition. The problems are good quality, and colleges are interested if you do well. Plus there are lots of resources for studying for them. Even if you only want to do well on MAT I think that these problems would help you. In any case the best way to learn is just to try solving lots of problems. If you tried a problem for a while (probably about an hour for these types of problems) and you still can’t get it, look at the solution, and see if there was anything in the problem that could have pointed you trying that.</p>
<p>If you have some questions about how to solve specific problems you can message me and I’ll see if I can help.</p>
<p>Right now I study through using AMC and Mathcounts resources, but I posted this thread to see if there were any resources specific for Mu Alpha Theta as this way is very inefficient due to there only being a small overlap. </p>
<p>In Florida Mu Alpha Theta is far bigger than AMC; About half of MAT’s attendants come from Florida and most of the schools here really don’t spend too much time practicing for the AMC whereas we spend the entire year training for Mu Alpha Theta. Furthermore, I honestly don’t really care all that much about what colleges think as I really just do this stuff to have fun (even if they were interested, I rarely place at the competitions).</p>
<p>As for specific problems, questions 3, 6, 8, 18, and 29 are some of the more trivial ones; some examples of the ones which I thought were rather obscure were 9, 17, and 19. After looking at the solutions I realize how to do them, but I feel that their solutions are so obscure that unless I studied every single corner of Mu Alpha Theta extensively, I wouldn’t have been able to get those questions right.</p>
<p>Thanks for responding :).</p>
<p>I see what you mean about those problems: they are tricky. I would advise just practicing problems, and eventually you’ll get sharp enough that you can figure out how to do a problem even if you haven’t seen anything quite like it before.</p>
<p>That’s interesting what you said about MAT in Florida; I didn’t know that. However, nationally the AMC is more well-known. I’m glad you’re not focused on impressing colleges too; it can seem like that’s all that matters. I studied a significant amount for the AMC tests and it has helped me a lot in college, so I think it can be worthwhile.</p>
<p>Yeah, I suppose that’s what I should keep on doing if there are no MAT-specific texts to get me right to the point :(. Thanks for the help though, it is much appreciated.</p>
<p>Yeah, MAT is really big in Florida. If you look at this wikipedia link: <a href=“Mu Alpha Theta - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_Alpha_Theta</a>, and you use Ctrl + F “Florida”, you’ll see that it say’s that Florida is the current favorite and if you check the past winners list, every single school is from Florida :P.</p>
<p>I understand the weight of AMC and I’d be honored if I could ever win in it, but as I said, I just do this for fun and if none of my friends or anyone does or even knows about something, I really don’t have the motivation to do it. Furthermore, I’m planning on becoming a doctor or similar, so I’m not sure how much number theory, combinatorics, etc. I will make use of once I get out of high school :P.</p>