Have you ever seen non-math teachers do math? Many students watched teachers compete in the FIRST EVER Who Wants to Be A Mathematician game show hosted by Chinmayi Goyal and Stavros Shafik on behalf of the YHS Math Honor Society on Wednesday, April 17th. The advisors of this club and the teachers behind the show were Mrs. Kelly DeYorio and Ms. Linda Cervone.
This competition consisted of four teams of two competing against one other to claim the title of “Best Mathematician!”. Each team received 5 questions to answer in each round. In the first round, Mr. Contreras and Ms. Antonucci competed against Mr. Egan and Mr. Kennedy. Both teams started off strong with the first question as they both hit the buzzer within 5 seconds of starting.
The competition got exciting when Ms. Antonucci and Mr. Contreras were in the lead. The last question was going to decide who would move on to the championship. As a tricky question came up, Mr. Contreras and Ms. Antonucci decided to use one of the advantages of the game, the “phone a mystery math teacher.” Mr. Bronzi (the MYSTERY teacher) then came onto the stage to help them out. Ultimately, Mr. Contreras and Ms. Antonucci were able to move onto the championship round.
Stavros and Chinmayi then led us to the second round of the game show. Mr. Heald and Mr. Howard now had to battle it out with Ms. Criscione and Ms. Mackenzie. Both teams went through the questions quickly, until it got to the trickier questions, like the logic puzzles.
This was when the 50/50 was used by Ms. Criscione and Ms. Mackenzie to eliminate two choices, but they could not guess the correct answer. Luckily, Mr. Heald and Mr. Howard had the wrong answer as well. Since Ms. Criscione and Ms. Mackenzie used the 50/50, they lost 25 points from their total score. Mr. Heald and Mr. Howard then took the win for this round, moving onto the last round.
The round that meant everything was the championship. As Mr. Contreras and Ms. Antonucci were against Mr. Heald and Mr. Howard, no one knew which team would win. Both teams had a hidden talent of math. As the scores were very close, Ms. Antonucci and Mr. Contreras took advantage of the “phone a math teacher.” Mr. Bronzi then entered the stage to help the team answer a very complicated logic puzzle. Even though the team lost 50 points for using this advantage, they were able to pull it off and take the win for this competition. This team showed that math truly is a universal language. Congratulations to the dynamic duo, Mr. Contreras and Ms. Antonucci!
All the teachers are looking forward to coming back next year and winning the title of Best Mathematician!
