MathCounts Resources and Links

[Boyd Blackburn]

Smith MathCounts Club,

(There are lots of other resources out there but those below are the very best.)

Resources for students who are enjoying the challenge of working on hard/interesting math problems and want to build themselves into serious math beasts:

Art of Problem Solving (aops.com)

This is the homebase for students throughout the USA who love math and want to get really good at it.  There are books you can buy and online classes you can take, but for our purposes there are two valuable, free resources at the website (note: you have to register to access these, but registration is free):

Alcumus is a sophisticated software program that runs in your browser.  It presents you with competition-level problems and tracks your progress and adapts dynamically so that, for example, if you are getting all the easy problems correct, it will focus on giving you harder problems.  Alcumus includes worked out solutions to all the problems, so you can read the solution when you miss a problem and figure out how to get that problem correct next time.

MathCounts Trainer is a new program at AOPS that is similar to Alcumus except it focuses just on problems from old MathCounts contests.

MathCounts Minis are short videos produced by the AOPS team for students like you.

Next Thought is a company that has designed a user-friendly style of presenting old MathCounts problems one-at-a-time and immediately telling you whether you got it right and immediately presenting you with a solution.  They have this year's School Handbook and old MathCounts Competitions.  You have to register, but it is free.

Khan Academy is a great place to find and watch an instructional video on just about any math concept you are curious about.  For example, if you don't know much about special right triangles (but they keep popping up on our MathCounts problem sets) you could do a quick Google search on "Khan Academy special right triangles" and find a useful video to watch very quickly.

Note that the practice problems on the Khan Academy website are often too easy and straightforward to be considered "competition-level," but they might help you master a concept initially.

mathcountsnotes.blogspot.com is a blog from an anonymous MathCounts coach with tons of great material.  I'm still trying to figure out how to take advantage of this resource.

Dr. Blackburn's web page has some useful info, especially about the Smith MathCounts Club.

BOOKS...I recommend these two over any others:

Competition Math for Middle School

The Art of Problem Solving, Vol. 1

- Dr. B

--

Boyd Blackburn

LEAP Math Teacher and MathCounts Coach

Smith Middle School

Chapel Hill, NC

919-918-2145 x21802

bblac...@chccs.k12.nc.us

 

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