Every fall, SMAAC invites a number of area high schools to participate in the annual Wooster Invitational Mathematics Competition. Preliminary tests are sent to all interested schools, with results due back to the College just before winter break. The results of this first round are calculated as a sum of the top 5 individual scores from each school, and the field is narrowed down to the top several schools. This year's finalists were Aurora, Akron East, Highland, Lutheran West, St. Vincent-St. Mary, Tallmadge, and Valley Forge.

When the teams arrived at the College bright and early on Saturday, February 7, they were greeted with doughnuts, juice, and coffee, along with the smiling faces of several SMAAC members, all donning brand new long-sleeve SMAAC T-shirts featuring a dodecahedron on the back (and still available through Professor Pierce or Professor Settergren for only $17!).

Festivities began around 9:30 a.m. with the team test, comprised of several questions from various fields of mathematics, such as algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry. This portion of the exam was allotted 40 minutes and was worth a total of 100 points.

Once finished with the team test, the teams moved on to the individual tests, each test worth 20 points. After 40 minutes of that, the students proceeded to the scavenger hunt. One person from each school was assigned one of seven symbols, so that the teams created were made up of one student from each school. The goal of the hunt was to go from location to location (on the inside and the outside of Taylor) as rapidly as possible, answering a question at each stop. Questions ranged from the approximate perimeter of Taylor in yards to the approximate volume of the revolving door in the basement (that big, black semi-cylinder that protrudes into the hall) to the mean, median, and mode of the office numbers on the plaque at the North entrance of Taylor.  After the scavenger hunt, all went to lunch at Lowry where some met up with tour guides for campus tours. At 1:00, everyone met in Taylor to find out the results of the competition.

They were as follows:
 

We want to congratulate all of this year's winners. Also, a big thanks goes out to Jeff Mansell and all SMAAC members who made this year's competition as successful as it was.