Groton Team Wins Girls’ Math Contest

Some of Groton’s youngest math whizzes took home the top prize at a recent regional competition for girls in ninth grade or younger, placing first among twenty-three teams.

 

Rebecca Serodio ’23, Tsion Shamsu ’24, Eleanor Taggart ’24, and Brianna Zhang ’23 showed off their skills by solving algebra, geometry, and probability problems, tallying the highest team score. In another strong showing, a second Groton team—Alisa Gulyansky ’24, Michelle Kim ’23, Bridget McAvoy ’24, and Amelia Pottash ’23—placed fifth.  

 

The students were competing in the Williston-Northampton School’s Whitaker-Bement Girls in Mathematics Competition, on January 19. "We all are in different math classes," said Eleanor of her teammates. "So we used each of our individual skills and knowledge to help each other out and solve different pieces of the challenging problems. The stress, suspense, and ultimate success was a small journey that we all got to experience together, bonding us over our common interest."

Competitors were scored individually as well, and four Groton girls placed in the top ten—Eleanor and Rebecca tied for third, while Alisa placed fifth and Brianna tenth.

Rounding out the day of math were talks about careers in math and science, with a focus on coding, touching on topics such as fractals, black holes, data science, algorithms, and cryptography.

“For kids who are already avid students of mathematics, the competition got them more excited about digging deeper into the math they will see in such contests,” said math teacher and Math Club advisor Jon Creamer, who expects to take Groton students to additional math competitions in the coming months.

Congratulations to Groton's winning math students and all the math lovers who competed!