PVPHS Math Team members meet during lunchtime to work on (and hopefully solve) contest math problems. Sometimes the team officers teach other members how to solve problems, while other lunchtime meetings are designated for contests. Members are also encouraged to attend off-campus events at high school and college campuses in Southern California to compete with other high school math teams. We also coordinate the American Math Competition (AMC) tests taken at PVPHS and the Mu Alpha Theta math honors society.
Lunchtime meetings take place in Mrs. Vijaiyan's room, S44. Lunchtime competitions are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays and their dates will be announced in the bulletin. Off-campus competitions occur either Wednesday after school (Bay Math League) or on Saturday (Math Day at the Beach). A detailed meeting and competition schedule is found on the Calendar page.
This question now has its very own section located at Becoming a Member.
Members participate in two lunchtime competitions: American Scholastic Math Association (ASMA) and California Math League (CAML). Each of these contests has multiple rounds. Problems require only numerical answers, but difficulty ranges amongst the competitions - ASMA is generally considered the easier of the two. More information about each of these contests can be found in the Competitions section of this website. These contests are meant to be challenging, so do not be discouraged if you cannot solve all the problems. The graded competition and solutions to the lunchtime competitions can be found in S44.
All study materials for Math Team members are emailed to you and are available in S44 upon asking.
No. Don't worry if you can't come to all of our lunchtime competitions or review sessions. There is no attendance requirement for math team. Competitions and review sessions are held to help students improve their math skills. The more you practice, the better you will become at solving math problems.
Off-campus competitions are the easiest way to meet people from other math teams. Traveling on a bus and spending part of a day with other Peninsula Math Team members is also a fun experience! If you're a freshman or a new Math Team member, off-campus competitions are the best (and most fun) way to get involved in Math Team. Lastly, there's always a bunch of good prizes (which can range from money to calculators to math software to medals) at these competitions!
Math team members can participate in all lunchtime competitions and Bay Math League. Due to enrollment limitations for other off-campus events, participation is by invitation only. Students are selected based on their interest in attending, prior performance in math team, and grade level.
Not really. We are interested in improving the collective ability of the team to solve math problems. Since some of the off-campus competitions have team-based portions, it is important that we can work well together. We do keep track of individual student scores for each lunchtime competition to recognize those who have excelled throughout the year.