[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 112 (Wednesday, July 9, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6499-S6500]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       U.S. MATHEMATICAL OLYMPIAD

 Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I would like to pay tribute to two 
outstanding Vermont students, Colin Sandon, of Essex, and David 
Rolnick, of Rupert. These two high school students both placed in the 
top 12 finishers in this country's highest precollegiate math 
competition, the U.S. Mathematical Olympiad, which took place in May. 
In the 34-year history of the Olympiad, this is the first time any 
Vermonter has made it this far and this year my state had two students 
accomplish this incredible achievement.
  Colin and David, at the ages of 18 and 16 respectively, have been 
preparing to compete at this level of mathematical competition their 
entire educational careers. They have achieved this goal through their 
own hard work and perseverance, and also through the support of their 
parents and teachers. David benefited from being home-schooled by his 
parents. The Vermont State Math Coalition identified Colin in the first 
grade, and he began tutoring outside of the classroom by engineers and 
physicists at IBM. Three years ago, he began taking high-level math 
classes at the University of Vermont.
  Both students have also benefited from the dedication of Anthony 
Trono, who retired from teaching at Burlington High School in 1992, but 
has played a key role in training Vermont's talented math students. 
Anthony directs the Governor's Institute in Mathematical Sciences, a 
week-long residential program for students held every year at the 
University of Vermont that both Colin and David attended. Anthony also 
runs the Vermont State Mathematics Coalition Talent Search. He will 
retire this year and Colin and David's success this year is a testament 
to the many years he has invested in Vermont's students.
  This month, Colin will compete on a six-student team which will 
represent the U.S. in the 49th annual International Math Olympiad. In 
the fall, both Colin and David will attend the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology. I congratulate them and their families on their 
accomplishments and I wish

[[Page S6500]]

them the best of luck in what I am sure will be bright futures.
  Madam President, I ask to have an article from the Burlington Free 
Press detailing their accomplishments be printed in the Record.
  The material follows:

Two Reach Apex in Math Competition, Essex, Rupert Teens Among Nation's 
                                  Best

                             (By Matt Ryan)

       Six congruent circles are arranged inside a larger circle 
     so that each small circle is tangent to two other small 
     circles and is tangent to the large circle. The radius of the 
     large circle is 2007 centimeters. Find the radius of the 
     small circles.
       For Colin Sandon of Essex and David Rolnick of Rupert, this 
     problem was preparation for a series of increasingly 
     selective math competitions. The two high schoolers placed in 
     the Top 12--Sandon tied for first place--in the country's 
     highest pre-collegiate math competition last week. They will 
     try out in June for a national, six-person math team that 
     will compete internationally in Madrid.
       Sandon, 18, and Rolnick, 16, are the first Vermont students 
     to place in the Top 12 at the U.S. Mathematical Olympiad in 
     at least a decade, according to the Mathematical Association 
     of America. Anthony Trono, who has been training Vermont's 
     math prodigies since he retired from teaching at Burlington 
     High School in 1992, said, as far as he knew, they were the 
     state's first students to accomplish the feat. The Olympiad 
     began in 1974.
       Trono, 80, of Colchester conceived the sample problem above 
     and provided The Burlington Free Press its solution: 669 
     centimeters. Four times a year, he mails a sample exam with 
     eight such problems to Vermont's high schools to test the 
     waters for up-and-coming whizzes. The problems, like those 
     found on exams for the American Math Competition, the 
     American Invitational Math Exam and the Olympiad--the three 
     tiers of the national math tournament through which Sandon 
     and Rolnick advanced--involve applications up to pre-
     calculus.
       ``Some of these problems aren't even algebra, it's just 
     arithmetic, but you gotta use your head to solve them,'' 
     Trono said. ``They usually have to prove something is true, 
     derive some kind of formula, or solve a very, very complex 
     problem.''
       During the course of the tournament, the field narrowed 
     from 500,000 students--including some from Canada--to the 500 
     who competed in the Olympiad.
       Students in the competitions generally take the exams at 
     their high schools. Sandon took his at Essex High School and 
     Rolnick, who is homeschooled, took his at Middlebury College. 
     Students were allotted 4 1/2 hours on two consecutive days to 
     complete the Olympiad's six problems. The highest scorer, 
     Sandon, a senior, and Rolnick, a junior, have been accepted 
     to and plan to enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of 
     Technology in the fall.
       ``I'm kind of nervous, because I've never been away from 
     home for more than a month, and MIT will be my home for the 
     next four years,'' Sandon said. ``On the other hand, I'll get 
     to meet new people there and take more challenging classes.''
       Sandon has sought more challenging classes since elementary 
     school.
       The Vermont State Math Coalition discovered Sandon when he 
     was in first grade. Engineers and physicists from IBM tutored 
     the boy for the next few years, as his capacity for math 
     exceeded that of his teachers. He finished pre-calculus in 
     sixth grade, and began taking courses at the University of 
     Vermont three years ago. His course load includes calculus 
     III, linear algebra, graph theory and number theory.
       His goal was to crack the Top 12 in the Olympiad.
       ``I felt like I had done pretty well, but I didn't think I 
     had done that well,'' Sandon said.
       His parents, Peter and Maureen Sandon, an engineer at IBM 
     and a retired home economics teacher, respectively, said the 
     announcement surprised them, too.
       ``We had a message on our answering machine,'' Maureen 
     Sandon said. ``I said, `Wait a minute, what did this message 
     say?' I must have replayed it three times.''
       Peter Sandon said his son left him behind ``quite a while 
     ago'' in math.
       ``I used to play chess with him, too, and I used to be able 
     to beat him,'' Peter Sandon said. ``And now I can't.''
       Colin Sandon said he enjoys strategy games, and also likes 
     to read science fiction and fantasy.


                          The renaissance man

       Rolnick said he also enjoys strategy games--as well as 
     hiking; tennis; word play; reading; writing; talking; 
     listening to classical composers, such as Bach, Beethoven, 
     Haydn, Schubert and Tchaikovsky; and studying moths.
       Tiny white moths are boring, Rolnick said. He prefers the 
     variety of larger moths with scarlets, violets, yellows, 
     greens, silvers and golds.
       ``I have had the fortune to grow up in a household with 
     parents who did not cause me to be afraid of insects,'' 
     Rolnick said. He blasted the ``societal prejudice against 
     insects'' that assumes all bugs ``bite, sting or eat 
     furniture.''
       Rolnick sees beauty in moths and math.
       ``Geometry I find easier to talk about,'' Rolnick said. ``I 
     love the way that things that are true, really are true.''
       ``If you have a triangle, and you join the vertices to the 
     midpoints of the opposite side, you come up with three lines. 
     Those lines will come to a point--those three lines will 
     always meet--and I find that very beautiful.''
       Problem solving becomes increasingly important as students 
     advance through the competitions, Rolnick said.
       ``For all the problems, there is a certain amount of 
     thinking and puzzling that is absolutely necessary,'' Rolnick 
     said.
       ``It is absolutely hard,'' he said of the Olympiad. ``It is 
     meant to be hard, even for professional mathematicians.''


                             Trono retires

       Sandon and Rolnick attended the Governor's Institute in 
     Mathematical Sciences, a week-long residential program for 
     students held at UVM during the summer.
       Trono has directed the institute and run the Vermont State 
     Mathematics Coalition Talent Search--for which he mails high 
     schools his sample exams--since the early 1990s. He said he 
     will retire from the institute this year.
       ``This has been a terrific year for me to go out,'' Trono 
     said.
       He said he has 10,000 ``super, very good problems''--those 
     that did not make the cut for previous sample exams--to give 
     his successors a head start.

                          ____________________