Kurt Hauglie/Daily Mining Gazette John Gershenson, organizer of the Math Jam competition, gives instructions Saturday to the more-than 160 elementary, middle and high school students in the multi-purpose room of Houghton High School. About 30 school districts took part.

HOUGHTON — There are many academic competitions available to Copper Country students in the spring, so John Gershenson thought it would be a good idea to create a math competition in December to help get the students ready for spring.

Gershenson, who is Michigan Technological University professor of mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics, and coach of the Houghton High School math team, said he created Math Jam eight years ago. The competition took place Saturday at Houghton High School. About 30 school districts took part. The team that travelled the farthest came from Iron County. There were more than 160 students taking part.

Originally, Gershenson said the Math Jam consisted of middle school and high school students only. Three years ago, elementary students were included.

No calculators were allowed in the competition, Gershenson said. All work had to be done the old-fashioned way with paper and pencil.

Gershenson said the competition began with individual then team rounds. For the individual round, students had to answer 25 questions in 40 minutes. For the team rounds, students had 30 minutes to solve 10 problems as a team.

After a lunch break, the Guts round consisted of teams of four from the elementary, middle school and high school levels. Students ran to the table at the front of the room to get the questions, which they brought back to their seats. When they had the answers, they ran back to to the table.

“Each round, the questions get harder,” he said.

For the championship round, the top 10 students from each level answered increasingly difficult questions in a timed competition. But before getting to that stage, some ties at the middle school and high school levels had to be broken.

The Championship round resulted in a champion for the elementary, middle and high schools.

Assisting Gershenson with giving out questions and getting the answers back  and checking the answers were teachers, parents and Tech students.

The high school champion was Houghton High School senior Noah Gershenson, son of John Gershenson. Noah said he’s taken part in all eight Math Jams, and he won last year, also.

Although Noah said he enjoys math, he doesn’t expect to take much math in college.

“It’s not really like my main passion,” he said.

Noah said he is going to major in linguistics. He’s looking at the University of Michigan, Brown University, Cornell University and Yale University.

The middle school champion was Sonia Jin, who is in seventh grade at Houghton Middle School. She said she’s passionate about math and expects to take math classes in college.

Champion Eddie Zhou, fourth-grade student at Houghton Elementary School said he enjoys math and the Math Jam.

Local Sponsors:

GS Engineering

OHM Advisors

Respawn Laser Tag

World of Wood

XMATIC

National Sponsors:

Texas Instruments

Art of Problem Solving

Smuckers

RESULTS:

Elementary School Individual

First Last School CD Rank

Eddie Zhou Houghton 1

Crystal Wang Houghton 2

Grant Northey Calumet 3

Jasmine Xu Houghton 4

Cecilia Ong Houghton 5

Ian Hong Houghton 6

Tyler Gregerson Houghton 7

Carter Worm Calumet 8

Jadon Packard Hancock 9

Alex Baquette L’anse 10

Elementary School Team

Team  Rank

Houghton A 1

Houghton B 2

Calumet 4 3

Houghton 5th 4

Mrs T 1 5

Middle School Individual

First Last School CD Rank

Sonia Jin Houghton 1

Samuel  Fang Houghton 2

Seojun Yoon Houghton 3

Maggie Haeussler Academy of the Holy Spirit 4

Linda Tang Houghton 5

Archer Olson Houghton 6

Kady Fontaine Houghton 7

Brian Knewtson Houghton 8

David Hendrickson Houghton 9

Yash Tawari Houghton 10

Middle School Team

Team  Rank

Houghton Black 1

Copper Island Algorithms (CIA) 2

Houghton Orange 3

Houghton White 4

Houghton Room 110 5

High School Individual

First Last School Champ Rank

Noah Gershenson Houghton 1

Shweta Pati Houghton 2

Maggie Wang Houghton 3

Ilhan Onder Calumet 4

Yvonne Wang Houghton 5

Adam Jordan Hancock 6

Kevin Beaghan Houghton 7

Grace Liu Houghton 8

Dominic Boggio Calumet 9

Ben Holladay Houghton 10

High School Team

Team  Rank

Houghton Black 1

Calumet A 2

Houghton Orange 3

Houghton Gremlins 4

Forest Park Lightning 5

John Gershenson, Ph.D.

Math Team Coach

Houghton MS/HS

Houghton, MI