The Mililani High School Math Club placed third in the virtual math competition on April 10, 2021. They competed in the Leibniz division against 10 other schools in Hawaii from 9 a.m. to about 10 a.m. Participating members of the Math Club included Freshman Nolan Carliste, Junior Cody Mitchell Chun, Sophomore Shota Haitsuka, Freshman Hayden Harai, Freshman Jourdan Hung, Freshman Keoni Manibusan, Senior Emma Pratt, Junior Blaise Swartwood, Junior Brain Valdez, and Sophomore Diana Velez.

     “This year was actually a lot faster than normal years because everything is online, so they just took care of their three (math problems) right away,” said MHS Math Club advisor Jesse Ono.

     To accommodate with the COVID-19 guidelines, the competition was held virtually. The Math Club members logged into Ono’s Webex link, and they had ten minutes to solve three problems per category that they competed in. The answers were then submitted on a Google Form. The competition itself was in a test-like setting where students had to turn on their cameras, could not use a calculator, and had to submit the Google Form when the ten minutes were over — no exceptions.

     “The students typically get three different events that they can participate in — it could range from Alg(ebra) 1 all the way to Trig(onometry) or Calculus — so we usually have the students pick the three that they are most comfortable with,” said Ono.

     After the three solo events were completed, three students stayed back in the Webex link for a team event in which they worked as a team to solve one problem. When the answers were all submitted, the graders checked the problems and released the scores, along with the school rankings. MHS placed after Iolani and Punahou, which received 1st and 2nd place, respectively.

     The Math Club started preparing for the event after March 6, which was the date of their previous competition. For practice, students logged into Ono’s Webex link every Monday and Thursday at 2:10 p.m. Then students asked questions about their problems and went over questions from competitions from previous years.

     “There’s a website, oahumath.org, and it tells you the dates of all of the competitions that are happening, and then you can go and see the sample problems. So what we do is, you pick your three events, and then you go through all of the different problems and the packets that they have online for us,” said Math Club President senior Emma Pratt.

     For more information about the MHS Math Club, email Ono at [email protected]