Moses Schindler, a junior at Ladue Horton Watkins High School, is one of 12 students selected to compete for $10,000 in the 2018 Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship featuring top math students from the U.S, Canada, and the UK. The contest will be held as part of the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, California, on Jan. 13.
Moses was selected for the 2018 Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship based on his score on an online qualifying test with questions on algebra, trigonometry, probability, and math history, which was administered by high school math teachers in the U.S, Canada, and the UK using Maple TA, a product of Maplesoft.
Fast Facts about Moses:
- He qualified for the USA Mathematical Olympiad this year.
- He can’t wait until he sees San Diego and the Joint Mathematics Meetings.
- Moses can put one foot behind his head (“sort of,” he says) and can do both feet simultaneously with some effort.
- If he wins first prize, he says that besides saving it for college, he’ll convert his winnings to one-dollar bills and go swimming in the money.
Who Wants to Be a Mathematician—Fun to the nth power!
This is the ninth annual Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Championship contest and the first international version. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has been doing regional contests at universities and science centers from Boston to Hawaii since 2001. In the contest’s history, more than 800 students have won over $500,000 in cash and prizes and have been cheered on by over 20,000 classmates.
The top prize in the contest is $5,000 for the winner and $5,000 for the math department of the winner’s school.
Sponsors
The contest is sponsored by the Who Wants to Be a Mathematician Technology Sponsor Maplesoft, the Online Community Sponsor Art of Problem Solving, the University of Southampton (UK), the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), Texas Instruments, John Wiley & Sons, and the AMS.