Who's going to MathCamp 09?

[peregrinefalcon88]

Does anyone know how many questions they got when they got in? i thought i got 1,3,4,5,7 but i didnt get in going to amsp instead

[Zeph]

Awesome, Michelle! I also went to AMSP last year, hence why we know each other. I solved 1-7 except 2b, to answer Peregrinefalcon... did you at least make waitlist? And don't worry, AMSP is awesome too; I hope Mathcamp can top it! It sounds great, at least, and it's two weeks longer

[befuddlers]

Oh well i only made it to the waitlist.

Anyways how many people are usually on the waitlist?

[solafidefarms]

Oh man the Junggi got in! And congrats to the rest of ya'll who got in, and condolences to those who did not. (Junggi gets special mention since I know I've met him )

[perfect628]

I got in, and shall be attending. Here's my intro:

I'm Sam Trabucco, a rising junior from Roxbury Latin in MA (I believe I know where you go Sonya ) This is my first year actually applying; I wanted to go last year, but this didn't occur to me until roughly after I didn't make MOP.

My interests include math, most science, classics (in particular, I take Latin and Greek, both of which I love), languages (I've really only taken French formally, but Spanish and German are also cool), linguistics (hmm I detect a theme), reading, TELEVISION, REALITY TELEVISION, music, board games, video games, and writing with gel pens. I also play baseball, and I dabble in programming. I am proud to say that I play no instruments, nor have I ever, and I do not sing.

At school I do Debate, though I have to say I'm pretty inarticulate and awkward when making speeches. I'm essentially the captain of our math club, in that I decide what we do/organize things in general, and coach the Mathcounts team. I also helped our science bowl team not make nationals.

Ah and math. As can be deduced from the above, I did not make MOP last year, and I didn't this year either. I'm very good evidently at doing worse than expected/hoped on the USAMO. My fields of particular interest are combinatorics, especially graph theory and game theory, and more recently linear algebra. I don't dislike anything except geometry, though that's only because I'm terrible at it.

Hmm other things that don't fit anywhere else that don't warrant their own paragraph. I'm hopelessly sarcastic, which evidently blurs the line of seriousness and joking when speaking to me? Huh. Also I use the words "evidently" and "well" a lot. I count two "evidently"s in this post. I like most music, but I've recently found that country is probably better than other things. I am very moderate politically--Though recently I've found myself leaning left on issues on which I used to lean right. Blah I don't know. Oh did I mention I like writing with gel pens? They're all I use anymore.

Hmm that went on for a while...Can't wait to see everyone this summer.

[Zeph]

I'm Leon Zhang, a rising junior from Hicksville, Tennessee. Actually, I'm from Oak Ridge, which to be honest isn't that bad, especially compared to the other schools around here <_< As I have indicated before, I'm not nearly as interesting as you guys, I think; my interests are pretty generically nerdy. I like math (:O), science, video games, browsing the internet, reading, music, webcomics, TV, and both feeling and appearing pretty awkward in general. Though I suck at it, I also like playing Capture the Flag and Ultimate Frisbee. I used to sing, before my voice started changing and my vocal range became incredibly constricted, but I play piano too (I'm not good at that, either! Ha... >_>)

I'd like to do debate, except my school doesn't offer it :\ I'm vice president of our math club, with president being a rising senior who is much, much smarter than I am <_< I also do Scholar's bowl (our team sucks) and Science bowl (I honestly am not all that great at Science Bowl, but thanks to the skill and knowledge of my teammates we managed to get 3rd at Nationals )

I like music; I'd say I like indie music, except I don't really know if that means anything anymore <_< I'm currently listening to a lot of Explosions in the Sky (awesome, awesome music for taking a walk) and Bon Iver, and my three favorite bands are probably Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Okkervil River (especially Wolf Parade). Anyone heard of any of these? Please don't assume I'm a hipster or anything from my taste in music, if you have; I dress in math and science competition t-shirts (I don't think I've bought a shirt since I bought a 42 t-shirt from ThinkGeek over a year ago <_<) and I feel incredibly awkward whenever I'm in a Starbucks! Honest!

I'm not that great at math, either... I don't think too highly of my intelligence, to be honest. I really, really love math, though; I'd say I most like combinatorics and number theory, and I tend to like game theory problems, in general. I'm absolutely dreadful at geometry, though, and hopefully I get better at it by USAMO next year >_>

I'm also a flaming liberal, essentially. Actually, a better term to describe me would be a civil libertarian, in that I'm huge on civil liberties, but nonetheless I don't think I've met more than five or six people my age who're more liberal than I am. I also try to avoid political debates, though, because I suffer from an extremely powerful instinct to look up everything people say, and people often seem to get annoyed when I point out factual inaccuracies <_<

My favorite emoticon is the shifty eyes, and my favorite webcomic varies, but in general I like xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, Questionable Content, Dresden Codak, A Softer World, Darths and Droids, Order of the Stick, and Pictures for Sad Children. Neil Gaiman is my favorite author (I love American Gods, Signal to Noise, and Sandman as my top three of his works, if anyone else has read his stuff too), and I'm currently in love with the book we're reading in class, Doctor Zhivago. I loved Firefly and am much more ambiguous on Dollhouse, am on Facebook way too often, can code kinda well in C++ and Java (not well enough, considering I'll be doing some work in computational science this summer <_<), and I'm a Nintendo fanboy (but I'm branching out! I play lots of Valve stuff now too, and I've always liked StarCraft... but surprise, I suck at that, too Actually I'm decent at most video games, and although I haven't played professionally I'm pretty good at Super Smash Bros... better than most people who say that, at least [most people who say that actually kinda suck, to be honest <_< in case you can't tell, I also like using parentheses in casual writing a lot]) Until about December last year I was an extremely vocal Apple critic, and then six months later I suddenly found myself with both a MacBook and an iPod Touch <_< (I run Boot Camp for games, though). I'm alright at chess, compared to most people, but I'm sure I'll be completely destroyed by nearly everyone at camp (I don't play competitively, which should indicate that I'm not very good) I also haven't learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube, yet... someone should teach me I do love me some Mao (although I haven't gotten a game together in such a long time, since it's kinda hard to get people who've never played before to try it sometimes) and Mafia, which I played a lot at AwesomeMath last year. Mafia can be great, great fun And... that's about it. Oh, and I guess since I wrote such a long intro I'm very self-absorbed, too But yeah, I'm much more of a stereotypical nerd than most of you guys, obviously <_<

[meenamathgirl]

Hi! I'm Meena Boppana and this will be my first year at Mathcamp and I'm super excited. I'm in 9th grade. I like school, hanging out with friends, being hyper, playing SET, singing, and obviously doing math. Ummm I live in NYC and like shelly32494 and Zeph I went to AMSP last summer.

[calc rulz]

Hi everyone! I'm David Corwin, and this will be my third year at Mathcamp. I live in Acton, MA (a suburb of Boston), and I'm a graduating senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School.

Math: Let's see, like all of you, I can't stand math. :p In particular, I really can't stand number theory and (abstract) algebra (maybe algebraic geometry someday), though I also have a distinctive distaste for complex analysis. Of course, with all that I have yet to learn in math, I might find even more things to detest

Anyway, other than that, I really like languages, like it sounds like a lot of people do. I take French (which I try to be fluent in) and also Latin, which I tend to like to speak (and often get to do at Mathcamp ). I know a tiny bit of Hebrew, and I'm interested in learning more of that, Akkadian, Sumerian, Arabic, Chinese, Yiddish, some slavic language such as Russian, maybe Japanese...yeah. I'm torn between learning languages that are similar to ones I know (i.e. more Indo-European languages) so that I can compare. On the other hand, it might be cooler to learn languages from families I've never seen before to really expand my knowledge. Anyway, that should give you some idea of my interests I also like the linguistics olympiad, and if you haven't, you should check out http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu/ - in fact, most of the winners are often Mathcampers

Other than that, I like philosophy, though I don't know a lot about it. I hope to take a lot of philosophy courses in the coming years (when, btw, I'll be at Princeton). I also like classical music a lot, though I don't play any instruments. I particularly like Baroque, such as Bach, Vivaldi, Geminiani. I have some interest in physics, history, politics.

Speaking of politics, I'm quite leftist (socially and also especially economically). I'm also a pretty religious Jew, and you'll see me wearing a kipah around. I like to play ping pong, ultimate frisbee, and tennis (none of which I'm that great at).

I think that's most of it. And of course, I'm excited to meet/see all of you!!!!

[LadyKn1ght]

Congrats to all those who got in! All of these bios were interesting, but I'm supposed to go to sleep soon so I can get up for AP English tomorrow, so I'll have to save my questions/comments for another time... (on that note, good luck to everyone on whatever AP tests you have left.)

But first, some promotion of the brand-new Facebook group for MC '09... http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=80605984813 . Hmmm, wonder who made that group .

[benzi455]

Hey everyone. Finally got my decision. I'm a rising high school senior (16 years old). I don't hold a candle to anyone here in regards to being a Renaissance man, but I do like math. I also like languages, even though all I know is a little Spanish (about at the level of AP Spanish), some Latin, and some Greek -- hopefully I'll be able to learn a thing or two from perfect628 ;-) Not the biggest fan of linguistics, though.

Other than that, well, I don't know... I'm a mediocre oboe player (it's definitely the best instrument, though). Geez, how do you guys do so much interesting stuff? I usually find that when school isn't tying me down I just hang out with friends...

I am sarcastic and have a strange sense of humor. I like chess, but I'm not good at it. Science is pretty cool, I guess. Unfortunately, this year at school -- my first year taking physics -- I had an EXTREMELY bad teacher, so I did not really learn that much physics (again, I'm sure I will learn a great wealth of physics by talking to kids who are all younger and smarter than me).

Backreading... HOLY CRAP ANOTHER OBOE PLAYER! And, like Amlesh, I'm head of the math club at my school, the key difference being that my math club has five members on a good day.

Leon, can you do all the glitch tricks in Melee?

[E^(pi*i)=-1]

[Zeph]

Hmmm... I don't really think so, just some basic stuff. I play Marth, and I can wavedash and L-Cancel and SHFFL and chaingrab; I used to be able to SH double f-air but Brawl kinda destroyed that. Maybe I should play a bit before I go to Mathcamp <_<

[ycz9000]

[Zeph]

Never been to Mathcamp before, and in fact before AMSP last year I'd never met another Leon in the flesh before; nope, I don't have a nickname either. Maybe one'll pop up. I guess if worst comes to worst my AoPS screenname is pronounceable... can't say the same for you. Yeckz? Also, yeah, I'm definitely bringing my GameCube controller, then; does someone need to bring a GameCube, too?

[Darmani]

Wow, seems I also got Leon-ninja'd. I was about to make a post requesting other people to bring Gamecube controllers to the first Leon post, but the second one appeared when I hit "reply."

Edit: And now there's a third, but it doesn't affect this post.

I've been planning to bring Melee to camp for a while. (Someone had her parents mail her an N64 with Smash 64 midway through last camp.) From Leon Zhou's hint, seems I won't need to. Still, you can count on my one good-condition GC controller (and a second one with a half-broken C-stick if we're short).

(The idea of even having multiple GCs with Smash set up just crossed my head, but I'm a bit averse to the idea of having video games play such a prominent role at Mathcamp. I might even suggest the GCs stay hidden for the first week.)

Anyway, though I play a decent Falco and a pretty good Link (relative to the fact that he is Link), I look forward to being pwned by you all soon.


P.S.: Interestingly, probably the most irreplaceable component in the Gamecube would be the controllers. The GC itself is now expendable for people who have a Wii. If you're like me and have an old 51 block memory card and a 251 block memory card with excess room on the 251 block memory card, you could bring the 51 with a copy of the Smash data on the 251, thus making the memory card expendable. Meanwhile, a new GC controller is 34 (not counting those cheap generic knockoffs, which have garnered poor reviews), and I heard something a while ago about Nintendo halting production on them.

[leoxnlin]

I got in and I only did 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, which seems to be the least out of anyone... (Everyone got 5... I must be missing something)

I'm the Leon that Zeph met at amsp. Intro: a rather stupid and pathetic kid, no matter how you look at him.

[e=mc2.kroll]

I didn't get in...
probably failed at writing up the proofs into a fairly readeable form, since i still think/assume they are correct.

maybe next year (still have another 3 years, so theres still hope^^)

[junggi]

anyone wanna play starcraft there
:O

[mustafa]

[CatalystOfNostalgia]

Hello! I am Carl Lian, rising junior in Lexington, MA. I got in last year, but didn't go due to a family vacation, so this will be my first and quite possibly only MathCamp (I plan to spend next July in Kazakhstan if you catch my drift maybe not though). Math is awesome, but I've been basically doing olympiad math for the past two years and am ready to expose myself to some awesome new stuff. I worked pretty hard to try get back to MOP this year but due to the **** geometry I missed by a problem. But it wasn't all in vain - I definitely got a lot better and am hoping to make Black next year, and I'm now finding it that I enjoy math significantly more than I used to. So I guess MathCamp serves as a break from olympiad math as well...but perhaps I will have time to do an olympiad problem or too for fun (NOT GEOMETRY I will hopefully do more of this next year?).

My other interests include music (I play classical piano and violin, but mostly piano), tennis, wasting time on Facebook, and wasting time in general. Also cubing, which I spend my time using the slow algorithm to solve it in 1:30, reality television as SamL has noted (in particular those VH1 shows that make me feel really good about the kind of person I am, but these don't really qualify as 'reality'). I also tend to correct people's grammar quite a bit, probably too much. So please tell me if it starts to bother you.

One of my favorite parts MOP down-time last year was classical-music-jamming with friends. So I'm totally down for that at MathCamp, I'll be bringing some four-hands piano music if anyone wants to play, I can sort of accompany violinists/any other instrumentalists (though I've never accompanied a non-violinist), and I've never played in a piano trio/quartet/quintet but that could be fun. Also I as I mentioned above I play violin, in a string quartet (though only one of the members is actually good...the other three of us sort of tag along but we manage to sound pretty good - we did the Shosti Quartet #3, Bach Art of Fugue 1,9, and collaborated with a bass and wind players to do the Schubert Octet). However I most likely won't bring my violin to camp so I guess this statement is pretty pointless unless someone doesn't want to play but decides to lend me their violin.

Yay, maybe later.

(edit) Oh, so people are talking about politics. Interesting. Well, I'm from MA, so I should be liberal, right? NO. Well, sort of. I'm definitely pretty fiscally conservative, but socially, I'm still undecided on quite a few issues but am beginning to lean more to the left. I guess science and social conservatism don't exactly go hand-in-hand. I don't really fit within the mainstream American party system - I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a Libertarian, mainly because Ron Paul scares me. That's probably enough for now.