Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Is your student breezing through her math curriculum? Hear the story of another math whiz kid as he talks with Chairman Michael Farris, on this edition of Home School Heartbeat.

Mike:


Anders is a silver medallist at the 2002 International Math Olympiad. You've obviously had a lot of experience at math competitions. How did you get started in competition?


Anders:


Well, when I was 9 years old I met Dr. Ryder. He runs a local math club along with Susan Schaffer and Steve Davis, and together those 3 people have gotten me involved in all these math competitions that I participate in.


Mike:


What are the competitions? How did you get started?


Anders:


One of the earliest competitions I did was called Math Counts which is a nationwide junior high math competition. The AMC 12 is the first competition on the road to the International Math Olympiad. It's taken by hundreds of thousands of students around the nation and the top 1% from that competition advance to the American Invitational Math Exam. And from there the top 250 go to Boston, Massachusetts to compete in the U.S.A. Math Olympiad which is a competition very similar to the IMO. And the top 12 in that get to compete for the 6 spots on the team.


Mike:


Tell us what AMC stands for and the basics of what the organization is.


Anders:


AMC stands for the American Math Competitions, and they're the ones that run all the competitions that go up to the U.S.A. IMO.


Mike:


Anders, this is a tremendous accomplishment to be competing at these levels. My congratulations to you.