6/8/98

CONTACT: Kathleen O'Toole, News Service (650) 725-1939;
e-mail kathleen.otoole@stanford.edu

Bay Area high school students win honors at national math competition

San Francisco Bay Area teams almost completed an unprecedented sweep of the 1998 American Regions Mathematics League (ARML), the most prestigious high school team mathematics competition in the country.

Local student teams, made up of 65 students from 30 schools, took first place in the B division, and first place in the individual portion of the May 30 finals, but finished second to a Massachusetts team in the A division. Gabriel Carroll, a ninth grader at Oakland Technical High School and a member of this year's U.S. Math Olympiad team, won the individual competition.

Ted Alper, head coach of the Bay Area teams for four years, was awarded the Samuel Greitzer Distinguished Coach award. Alper is senior mathematics instructor at Stanford University's Education Program for Gifted Youth, a program that offers computer-based mathematics courses to advanced students who wish to accelerate their mathematics education while still in elementary and secondary schools. About one third of the Bay Area participants in this year's competition are taking the computer-based courses. (The gifted youth program also offers computer-based courses in expository writing to students in grades 4 to 12 as well as mathematics and physics courses up through the third year of a college undergraduate curriculum.)

Bay Area team members were selected and trained by Alper and Joshua Zucker, a teacher at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, with assistance from Stanford students.

The 23rd annual competition involved 120 teams of 15 members each competing at three locations: Penn State, the University of Iowa and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Full ARML results and information about the competition may be found at www.armlmath.org. Information about the Education Program for Gifted Youth may be found at www-epgy.stanford.edu.

-30-

By Kathleen O'Toole