Weapons of Math Destruction

Editor's Note ( the "editor" would be me ) : I posted this story on my Facebook today, because a lot more people look at my Facebook posts than look at this blog, but I thought I'd post this story here for posterity.

I'd never posted any math awards Michael had won in years past, because Michael always had the reputation as the math wiz, and I didn't want to seem like I was bragging about him too much. However, I feel Peter's always been short changed in that regard ( friends and relatives have often talked about how good Michael is in math while Peter was in earshot ), so I'm going to do some bragging about Peter's accomplishments today. First of all, to give Michael his due, in the previous two years ( 7th and 8th grade - he's in High School now ) Michael finished in 2nd and 3rd place ( winning swag like Amazon Kindles and Echos ) in a middle school math competition at St. Joseph's High School, which includes about 300 competitors from 20 middle schools. Michael also won some swag in a few other smaller math competitions. At last year's St Joseph's completion ( Michael in 8th grade, Peter in 7th grade ), Michael did great ( as noted above ), but Peter did so poorly he was crying in the school lunch room after the competition. This year, Peter returned as an 8th grader to that competition and finished 7th place overall and 1st in his middle school. He also went to a middle school math competition at Princeton this year with and won 1st place for his middle school in the team competition with 3 of his 8th grade teammates. About 2 or 3 weeks ago, Ruth found out about about another middle school math competition ( one that didn't exist last year ) that allowed each of the schools participating to send multiple teams of 4-6 student each. The teams would be formed by the students themselves and the teams would do their own preparation without the help of teachers. Peter's school sent multiple teams of 5 and 6 students, and one of these teams with 5 kids ( including at least one of Peter's 8th grade teammates on the 1st place Princeton team ) invited Peter to join. However, Peter isn't very social or assertive and he didn't get back to the team on time, and the day before teams and their members needed to be submitted, Peter was left without a team. Peter was resigned to not being on a team, but Ruth scrambled, started calling some parents, and at the last minute she put together a team of Peter, two 7th graders and one 6th grader. That team might be at a disadvantage against teams of 5 or 6 8th graders and including Peter's 1st place teammates from the Princeton competition, but at least Peter had a team. Last Sunday, the 3 other kids came to our home and had about a 3-hour training session with Peter ( about halfway through the session, Michael chipped in to help with the training ). I was so proud watching Peter explain some concepts to his younger teammates. It reminded me of the times I used to teach Peter math sitting on the floor of a hallway while Michael ( who was prodigious in math at a much younger age than Peter ) was taking classes in competition math on Saturday mornings. All that hard work paid off today as Peter's team finished 1st in the math competition ( out of 35 teams )! Great job, Peter!

Rich

P.S. The name of this post is the name I suggested for Peter's math team but Ruth did not submit to the school, because we both knew it was terrible name to submit to the school for many reasons.  Still, in my mind Peter's math team will always be "Weapons of Math Destruction", because those kids destroyed those math problems today.