Idaho Society of Professional Engineers
Friday Update - 02/03/06
UPCOMING EVENTS:
• February 4, 2006 – ISPE
Northern Chapter (Lewiston) MATHCOUNTS Competition
• February 4, 2006 – ISPE
Southeast Chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition
• February 7, 2006 – ISPE Magic
Valley Chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition
• February 11, 2006 – ISPE
Southwest Chapter MATHCOUNTS Competition
• February 14, 2006 – ISPE
Northern Chapter (Coeur d’Alene) MATHCOUNTS Competition
• February 19 -25, 2006 –
National Engineers Week
• February 21, 2006 –
ISPE
Southwest Chapter EWeek Luncheon – Doubletree Riverside, Boise
• March 11, 2006 – State
MATHCOUNTS Competition – Boise State University - Boise
• March 16 - 17, 2006 - ISPE
Annual Meeting - Boise, ID
• July 6 - 11, 2006 - NSPE Summer
Meeting - Boston, MA
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MATHCOUNTS PROBLEM OF THE WEEK
Can you solve this MATHCOUNTS problem? The answer will appear in next week's
edition of the Friday Update!
MATHCOUNTS Competition Season Approaches
The Sprint Round of the MATHCOUNTS Chapter Competition has 30 questions and
students are given 40 minutes to complete the round. Though it isn’t expected
that most students will finish all 30 questions, what is the average time a
student can spend on each of the 30 questions, in minutes: seconds per question,
if a student works all 30 questions in exactly 40 minutes?
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Some chapters will hold a Countdown Round for the highest-scoring 25% of the
students at the competition or the top 10 students at the competition, whichever
is fewer students. What is the greatest number of students at a competition for
which "25% of the students (to the nearest whole number)" is fewer students than
"the top 10 students?"
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MATHCOUNTS competitions are very different from tests students take in math
class. For a MATHCOUNTS competition, a score of 23 out of 46 (or 50%) is
absolutely fantastic! The Target Round of a MATHCOUNTS competition has four
pairs of problems. If we’re told that a student answered exactly half of the
Target Round questions correctly, and answered one question in each of the pairs
of questions correctly, how many different combinations of questions could she
have answered correctly? (One combination of questions is #1, 3, 5 and 7.)
Answer to last week’s MATHCOUNTS problem:
A full day is 24 hours, so if the game lasted 48 hours, it would have lasted
exactly two days with the completion coming at 8 a.m. on Monday. We need 10 more
hours to make the total 58 hours. Ten hours after 8 a.m. Monday is 6 p.m.
Monday.
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The first game lasted 30 hours and 12 minutes. Since 12 minutes out of 60
minutes is 1/5 or 0.2 hours, let’s say that the first game lasted 30.2 hours. If
the points are scored at the same rate, then we can use proportional reasoning
and we need to solve the following two equations: 4107/30.2 = x/58 and 4018/30.2
= y/58. Multiplying both sides of both equations by 58 gets us to x = 7888 and y
= 7717. We would expect the score to be 7888-7717. (The actual score was
3688-3444.)
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The game lasted 58 hours, which is 3480 minutes, and each team had five players
playing at all times. This means that there were 3480 ´ 5 = 17,400 minutes of
playing time to fill with the 12 players for each team. If this time were
divided amongst them equally, each member would play for 17,400 ¸ 12 = 1450
minutes. This is 1450 ¸ 60 = 24.16666 hours = 24 hours and 10 minutes.
If you want to see last week's problem again, click
http://www.mathcounts.org/webarticles/anmviewer.asp?a=793&z=107
Idaho Society of Professional Engineers
PO Box 170239
Boise, ID 83717-0239
208-426-0636
Fax: 208-426-0639
E-Mail: ispe@rmci.net
Web Site: www.Idahospe.org
Idaho
Society of Professional Engineers
