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Math Team Takes 1st in Division at Princeton

4/21/2023

Congratulations to our Sierra Canyon Varsity Math Team for taking 1^st place in their division at the Princeton University Mathematics Competition (PUMaC) over Spring Break!

In what might be one of their most remarkable team achievements to date, Sierra Canyon mathletes earned 1^st place in the competition’s Power Round, tied for 1^st in the Team Round, and won 1^st place in the Overall Team Rankings. Their victory also included a 3^rd place finish for the sum of all individual scores earned by SC team members, demonstrating skilled teamwork and an extraordinary depth of knowledge.

Sierra Canyon’s eight-student team consisted of captain Wendy W. '23, co-captain Alex B. '24, Shin M. '26, Thomas M. '27, Nikhil M. '26, Dylan O. '24, Frank Y. '24, Tiger Z. '25, each of whose name is now enshrined in the PUMaC website for their superior individual performances. Individual highlights included:

Wendy and Frank tied for 19^th place in the Algebra Round.
Tiger earned 1^st place in the Geometry Round, while Wendy, Thomas, and Nikhil earned 18^th, 20^th, and 29^th, respectively.
Alex earned 2^nd place in the Number Theory Round, while Tiger and Shin earned 7^th and 25^th.
Alex also made 15^th place in the Combinatorics Round, and Dylan finished 17^th.

The most challenging part of the competition was, by far, the notorious and exhilarating PUMaC Power Round. Students were given a week to complete an enormous structure of proofs, developing knowledge of previously unknown material. The problem set itself was 38 pages long.

The team had to construct proofs about ideal elements in abstract algebraic structures called "rings" and combine those results with proofs about isomorphisms and vector spaces to reach generalized theorems about PID Structures. A PID is a Principal Ideal Domain, and the goal was to prove that finitely generated modules—which are set of elements with abstract operations on them isomorphic to addition and scalar multiplication—over a PID can always be uniquely decomposed similarly to how integers can be broken down into their prime factorizations.

By the end of the week, Sierra Canyon's Math Team submission was 62 pages of dense, concise math proofs. Each student spent 40-50 hours that week working on the problems, collaborating with teammates, and coming up with great answers. Frank said, "The Power Round was the best. It was difficult, we all worked very hard, and it was great for team spirit, team bonding." Sierra Canyon earned 1^st place in their division, besting half of the teams in the top open division at Princeton. It's a week the students on the team will never forget.

At the in-person portion of the contest, Alex and Tiger were both called for a special round of the competition reserved only for the elite competitors called the Individual Finals. There, they had 90 minutes to solve three problems. When the dust settled, Alex placed 17^th —against 161 contestants—and Tiger took 1^st overall in the individual rankings. What a phenomenal achievement by both students! Coach Chris Tillman said, "I couldn't be more proud of them. This is an extremely difficult competition, full of kids who've been training for years—as we have. I'm proud of the whole team. This has been an unbelievable string of events, and the work every one of them has put in over the years, including their support for one another, is truly inspiring to witness."

We agree with Coach Tillman and congratulate this exceptionally talented group of Trailblazers!

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Middle and Upper School: 20801 Rinaldi Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311 | 818.882.8121

Sierra Canyon School is a private, independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory school for students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12 located in Chatsworth, California. The highly cosmopolitan campus community is reflective of the Greater Los Angeles area and the world at large. Students are empowered to realize their greatest creative, ethical, intellectual and physical promise through small class sizes, a diverse student-teacher culture and a family-like environment.