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Sierra Canyon Math Team Triumphs at Princeton
Congratulations to the Sierra Canyon Math Team on earning 3rd place in the Power Round, 3rd in the Team Round, and 5th overall in their division at the Princeton University Mathematics Competition (PUMaC) the weekend of March 27!
Phillip Miao ’22 individually earned 5th place in his division on the Geometry Round. Youbin Cho ’21 and Wendy Wang ’23 each finished in the top 10 of their individual portions, advancing to the Individual Finals and giving them an additional two hours of competition to solve three problems against the tournament’s best.
Sierra Canyon’s team consisted of Youbin, Phillip, Alex Bai ’24, Pierre Baza ’21, Zack Mazaheri ’21, Otto Rahmel ’22, Wendy, and Shuming Zhao ’23. They spent over 40 hours each from March 18-25 working collaboratively to solve problems and write lengthy proofs for the notoriously difficult Power Round. This year’s topic required them to incorporate some properties of graph theory and geometry to discover and prove results about path lengths on the surfaces of three-dimensional polyhedra under varying characteristics. This is the third year in a row Sierra Canyon has placed in the top six in their PUMaC Power Round division. Competitor Otto Rahmel said, “It was a crazy week. We put so much time into that thing, but it was fun. It was really hard, but it was fun.”
The Team Round was an enormous success. The eight students divvied up 15 problems in 40 minutes, cross checking each other’s work and confirming results. The problems were extremely challenging and drew on disparate areas in mathematics. Coach Chris Tillman said, “These kids have great leadership in Youbin and Phillip. We’ve been practicing so much, and they’ve done so many competitions now that they’re really clicking in these team rounds. They know how to work together, and they get right into the problems.”
Sierra Canyon completed the last round of the California Math League contest in March and finished the year in the top eight schools in California. The Math Team still has a busy April and May, with the Johns Hopkins Math Tournament, inteGIRLS spring contest, San Diego Honors Math Contest, and State Championship for Mathleague to go!
Congratulations, and good luck, Math Team!
Lower School: 11052 Independence Avenue
Middle and Upper School: 20801 Rinaldi Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311 | 818.882.8121
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.
