http://www.yumasun.com/news/awc-58030-year-math.htmlCongratulations to the real Americans who won this. I suggest they leave their shithole of a state as quickly as they can.
"Arizona Western College math students helped place the college on the national stage with an award-winning performance in a nationwide test.
The five members of AWC's American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges' (AMATYC) student math league competition team finished second in Arizona and fourth in the Southwest region in the organization's national exam.
Kathryn Watson, AWC interim associate dean for science, math and agriculture, said this was the third year AWC participated and all of those involved are pretty excited about the event.
"Every year we have more participants and every year we score higher. I think it's absolutely wonderful we have this caliber of participation."
Not only did the team perform well but the top AWC finisher, Hanh Dung Dao, a 20-year-old sophomore biology major, placed first in Arizona, tied for first in the Southwest region and was 20th in the U.S. out of 2,200 competitors.
Dao said she was surprised to finish first. She called her parents in Vietnam and they told her "good job," she recalled.
"I think math is not so much problem-solving but knowing how to think right. If you have the right thinking, you can arrive at the right solution.""
And putting on my mathematician's hat for a moment, she's basically right. Look at a problem in the "right" way, and it's easy. Look at it in the "wrong" way, and it's fucking impossible. The most important thing a budding mathematician learns is lots of different ways to look at a problem, and select the one that's likely to make the problem easy.