Held twice a year, the Harvard-MIT Math tournament is known as one of the largest and prestigious high school competitions all around the world. On Saturday, Nov. 15, more than 1000 students worldwide entered this popular event. Out of these numerous math prodigies, Diamond Bar High School sophomore Benjamin Chen rose up to the occasion and placed sixth in this competition.

Chen flew to Cambridge, Massachusetts for the weekend to compete in this competition held at Harvard University with his team—which he has been a part of for three to four years—from the Orange County Math Circle, an organization where high school students gather to learn mathematical concepts and teach it to underserved students in Orange County.

There are two parts to this event. The first part is an individual test divided into two sections: general and theme, both of which are scored individually. The general section is a ten question test that covers random mathematical concepts while theme focuses on specific topics like probability and parabolas. Chen did not place in theme, but placed sixth on the general and 17th overall in the individual test.

“I was pretty relaxed throughout the day. I was worried after the theme round though because I knew I made a few mistakes,” Chen said.

The second part was also divided into two parts: a team round where each team works on a test together, and a guts round in which a runner from each group turned in answers and received new questions on behalf of its team. Chen and the OCMC won fourth place in the team round and second in the guts round. Overall, they successfully won second place sweepstakes which is higher than first place.
Later, on Saturday, Nov. 22, Chen competed in the Caltech-Harvey Mudd Math Competition at Harvey Mudd College. This huge competition is split into two parts, a team round and an individual round. While Chen’s team—the OCMC—placed second in the team round, he placed first out of 300 students in the individual round.

Though most students rather solve basic addition problems than dealing with complex equations, Chen prefers it the other way around.

“Well I enjoy doing challenging math, stuff that I’m not sure I can solve. I don’t really like easy math that requires little thinking,” Chen said.

In addition to Chen’s accomplishment, DBHS’ Math Team, guided by math teacher Howard Alcosser, traveled to Pepperdine University to participate in the Pepperdine Math Day event on Nov. 15, where they placed sixth out of 14 schools. Teams of 15 students from schools all over Los Angeles County gathered to compete in this event. The overall score was determined by taking the average of the top five individual scores from each team after a 90 minute long individual test.

“Although despicably long and impossibly hard, the competition was nevertheless enjoyable because in the end, no matter the outcome, we [math team] still had fun,” senior president of the Math Team Hall Chen said.

Hall Chen believes that although math may not always be everyone’s favorite subject, they should take the chance to learn and understand it because math is used daily in everyone’s lives.

“Math is hard and sucks rocks, but it does wonders to your mind. I mean, math is the one subject where [you’re] constantly, over and over again, rewarded for looking at things from different perspectives. Your greatest asset in math will be your ability to see things from different angles and this is a skill that is valuable everywhere! In everything we do! It’s how people problem solve,” Hall Chen said.