The second online Math Day, referred to as Math Day 2.0, will be held virtually on Thursday, December 2, 2021, hosted by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska high schools are invited to join us online for a day of fast-paced mathematics.
Math Day is designed for students in grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 and for exceptional students in lower grades. Teachers who would like to invite students from lower grades to participate must request and receive written permission from Nebraska Math Day. Homeschooled students are also welcome to attend but will need to contact us for a registration code. Contact us at mathday@unl.edu. Registration will open in September.
Math Day 2.0 will consist of a team mathematics competition, the Math Bowl 2.0, on Dec. 2, as well as the individual PROBE I (Problems Requiring Original and Brilliant Effort) Exam. The PROBE I exams will be mailed to teachers ahead of time with proctoring instructions. All students will take the exam at the same time on the same day. We hope to set that time for early in the day on Dec. 2. Teachers will immediately mail the bubble sheets back to us for scanning and grading.
Math Bowl 2.0 is a Swiss-system tournament pitting three-member teams against each other. The team competitions will be divided into two classes, competitive and recreational, with trophies given to the top three teams in each class. Two teams will meet in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but does not play the same opponent more than once. The Swiss system seeks to provide a clear winner with a large number of competitors and a relatively small number of rounds of competition, without a single bad result terminating participation.
We anticipate that bowl rounds will occur in the morning between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. CST and in the afternoon between 12:30 and 3 p.m. CST. A schedule will be finalized when we know how many teams are interested in competing. We are planning for a scenario in which a teacher would not have to request a sub and could ask other teachers to cover their class during their bowl rounds. At most, 12 kids would be taken out of class to compete in bowl rounds. We encourage a bowl team to compete on one Zoom account, but we will allow students to compete from home on individual Zoom accounts (note: then their collaboration will be limited).
For more information as it is updated, visit: https://math.unl.edu/programs/mathday/2021