Math Team’s success multiplies
December 16, 2015
After a record-breaking performance in this year’s Math Madness competition, the Diamond Bar High School Math Team’s wild run through the gauntlet has cumulated in a first place finish in its division.
The team faced off against Valley Christian High School from San Jose in the final round, a match that resulted in a 93-62 defeat for the Brahmas.
However, the result of the match was reversed due to the discovery that one or more of the members on the VCHS team had been cheating.
The misconduct was made obvious by the fact that the top scoring competitors of the VCHS team were not in the top 100 scorers in the nation, making it was highly unlikely that they would be able to earn a perfect score.
Additionally, the two teams had been very evenly matched in the previous round despite not playing against each other; the DBHS team earned 69 points and the VCHS team had earned 70.
Tom Kelley, the founder of the Interstellar website in which the platform for Math Madness is held, found an inconsistency between VCHS’ score in the final round and its past scores.
“I’m not as studied in math as you are, but I know it well enough to detect a statistical anomaly,” Kelley said in an email to the DBHS Math Team. “The numbers just don’t lie here. One or more of Valley Christian’s students cheated. I cannot reverse the score, but I have reversed the winner in the bracket.”
The DBHS team is now ranked first overall in the nation for their division. There are a total of six different brackets that teams are divided into based on the number of active math competition participants. DBHS is in Division IIE, which is made up of teams with more than 20 active members. The ranking is a new record for the team, which had previously only been able to reach the quarterfinal round.
“This is my second year of Math Madness, and [the final round] was the best round I’ve ever had,” president Ava Wu said. “I was already impressed with my team when we made it to quarterfinals, but finals; it’s a totally new level.”
