Bob Jones High School Places sixth in national math contest

Bob Jones High School has some of the best high-school mathematicians in the country, as demonstrated by their sixth-place finish in the 2012 Collaborative Problem-Solving Contest (CPSC), a national mathematics contest administered by National Assessment & Testing.

While most math competitions encourage rote memorization, familiar problems, and quick mental reflexes, the CPSC presents schools with 15 intricate problems to be solved over the course of a week.  Under the guidance of coaches Kimberly Cox and Shaun Bardell, students worked together using brainstorming, collaboration, research, and technology to solve the problems, gaining experience with skills that will be critical in college and their careers.

The 2012 Collaborative Problem-Solving Contest included creative problems accessible to students of all abilities, such as one asking teams to decrypt mathematical quotes based on the number of letters each word had in common with math words such as “abacus”.  Other problems on the test started out simply, but progressed to some very difficult conclusions.  One such problem involved finding sets of numbers that produce special sums whenever any two numbers from the set are added together.  The first part asked for a set of three numbers with any pair summing to a perfect square, but the final part required solvers to find a number that was the sum of two perfect squares in at least three ways.  There was also a single open-ended problem that asked teams to redesign the website and logo for the competition.

In addition to their overall 6th-place recognition, Bob Jones High School was commended for having the highest score on five of the fifteen problems, including the only perfect score on problem five, one of the most difficult.

This problem was the one discussed above involving sets of numbers with special sums.