అమెరికా చదువులు-6

టపా ఆంగ్లం లో రాసినందుకు ముందుగా క్షమాపణలు.

I mentioned in my previous series (Series -3) about few math competitions in elementary school level (like math league, math Olympiad and math continental league). All these contests are also administered  in middle schools and high schools. I posted some important links of books and resources in my previous series for the above competitions. In this series, I will not go too much into the details of math competitions administered in middle school level, but provide you with helpful aids and links. 

Math counts - very popular and prestigious contest in 6, 7, 8 or 7, 8 grades (middle school level) which is almost administered in every school and all states. MATHCOUNTS is sponsored by corporations and foundations like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman Foundation, Department of Defense, National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), CNA Foundation etc.

Every school conducts some preliminary contests and selects group of individuals who excelled in those tests. For duration of 3/4 months all those students form a club in their school and sit together for hours practicing the most difficult arithmetic problems. There are tons of resources and some online classes for all those parents who are interested in guiding their "self-motivated" kids to crack this contest. Calculators are allowed for some rounds and not allowed for some rounds. All students who are participating in this competition should be able to compute math very quickly in their brains. (Fast math computing skills). Math counts in my own words is pure arithmetic math contest. This contest is only administered in Middle school level.

Here are some useful links:

Details of the competition:

http://mathcounts.org/competition

Free handbook with tons of warm up problems:
http://mathcounts.org/document.doc?id=886

Free sample problems for math counts :

http://mathcounts.org/pastcompetition

Apart from the above links, I highly recommend some books and online classes for students who love math and are excelling.

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/contests.php

Art of problem solving also offers some great math online classes .The link below has all details.

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/classlist.php

If you are specifically looking for Math counts competition problem solving classes. Here it is:

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/classlist.php#cd_mathcounts:basics

Another competition which I would like to mention in this series is "AMC" American Mathematics Competition.  I would suggest students who are really interested in math to take this competition very seriously. When students apply to colleges merit scholarship forms will ask for AMC 12 score to assess math aptitude.AMC competitions are administered in 6th grade (rare, but there are schools) or from 7th and  8th garde  in some states/schools. Higher levels of these competitions will be administered in high school. There are different levels in this competition. AMC 8, AMC 10,AMC 12,American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME),United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) and the United States of America Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO),Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP), International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

At middle school level ,students will take AMC 8 and if they score very well in AMC 8, they can advance to AMC 10, and if they perform exceptionally well in AMC 10, they will be permitted to take AMC 12. However rest of other AMC competitions are all high school competitions (AMIE, USAMO,MOSP,IMO)

Here are few useful links for this competition:

http://amc.maa.org/whatswhat.shtml

Practice books for purchase :

http://amc.maa.org/d-publication/publication.shtml

Sample contests :

http://www.orangeschools.org/includes/uploads/Educational%20Programs/2007%20AMC%208%20Practice%20Test.pdf

http://www.orangeschools.org/includes/uploads/Educational%20Programs/2007%20AMC%208%20Practice%20Test%20Solutions.pdf

http://www.orangeschools.org/includes/uploads/Educational%20Programs/2008%20AMC%208%20Practice%20Test.pdf

http://www.orangeschools.org/includes/uploads/Educational%20Programs/2008%20AMC%208%20Practice%20Test%20Solutions.pdf

http://mmsets.org/pdfs/amc/2011_AMC_8_Competition_Problems.pdf

http://mmsets.org/pdfs/amc/2011_AMC_8_Competition_Solutions.pdf

http://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/archivedocs/2010_2011/lectures/1011lecturespdf/AMCPrepBMC.pdf

You can find some more practice problems using Google serach. 

Here is the link to another  blog and this blog recommends some good books, some of which I mentioned in one of my previous series.

http://mydealreview.blogspot.com/2010/12/2010-amc8-solutions-and-more.html

I came across some more posts in the same blog, which might be useful . You can visit the blog and check for them.

http://mydealreview.blogspot.com/