[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.
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