By Maggie Kane ’13

Add ‘em up: FOUR teams of Kalamazoo College students finished among the top 10 at the 2012 Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition, with one K team bringing home the top prize. The three-hour competition held April 14 at Calvin College in Grand Rapids pitted multiple teams from 10 colleges against each other.

The ten-question exam “involved all branches of mathematics that undergraduates are familiar with,” said Rosemary K. Brown Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science John Fink, who accompanied the teams to the competition. He said unlike other colleges, K teams don’t practice before competitions because of their busy schedules.

“It’s like pickup soccer to them,” Fink said of his students, “Except they are people who like to play recreational mathematics.”

The K team of Dan Esman ’12, Trung Hoang ’12, Hang Nguyen ’14 took first place with a perfect score of 100. It’s the second straight year a K team has brought home the top trophy. Jinyuan Huang ’14,Renjie Song ’13, and Jiakan Wang ’13, finished third. Utsav Adhikari ’14, Sajan Silwal ’14, and Mojtaba Tafti ’15 finished sixth. The two-person team of Philip Mulder ’15 and Umang Varma ’14 finished ninth.