On Saturday January 25th, the ILS Mu Alpha Theta competition team participated in the MAO Math January competition hosted at Florida Atlantic University. The regional competition was for the Florida Mu Alpha Theta association, which ILS is proudly part of.

There were 34 competing schools at FAU, and the ILS Pre-Calculus team scored in the top-10 on the group test. The Calculus team scored in the top-third of the school’s competing. This was the first top-10 finish for the Pre-Cal team.

There are 11 ILS students on the team accompanied by ILS math teachers Ms. Julie Anne Cannon and Ms. Lexi Quintero. The Calc team was comprised of seniors Ivette Acosta, Miguel Valle, and Bella Falero, with juniors Lucas Mitraud and Beatriz Diez. The Pre-Cal team featured juniors Ana Ulivi, Isa Juara, Carmen Isusi, Mariana Bujalil, Mariana Olarra and Sara Gaitan.

Many Mathletes traveled to FAU from different schools and faced-off in teams to solve Algebra, PreCalculus, Statistics, Geometry and Calculus problems. Individual students participated in an inter-school challenge, which included solving a variety of problems, with cyphers to decode and some in different languages. Even the teachers got to join in on the competition.

Ms. Cannon noted that the experience was fun and a great team-building activity.

“This is only our second year of competition,” Ms. Cannon explain. “The team is still growing, but we’re starting to see the benefits of these experiences.”

The Pre-Calc and Calc teams are made up of Mathletes from the ILS Mu Alpha Theta honor society. In order to join Mu Alpha Theta, a student needs to have at least a B+ GPA in their Math classes, as well as a good GPA overall.

Mu Alpha Theta’s next competition is this weekend in Naples, FL, at Golden Gate high school.