The 2023 VHHS Math Tournament

On December 2nd, 2023, over 900 students from 40 different schools across Alabama and Georgia gathered at Vestavia Hills High School to compete in the annual math tournament hosted by our own math team. Students helped the tournament run smoothly by working various jobs such as scanning and uploading scantrons to grade written tests, manually checking answers to grade ciphering, proctoring tests, monitoring hallways, and distributing snacks in the cafeteria. 

Students also contributed to pre-tournament preparations: All test questions were written by students in the spring and were edited and proofread over the following months, and students also bubbled in over a thousand scantrons to help prevent errors, moved desks to set up testing rooms, and assisted in other ways. However, most of the organization was done by math team sponsors Mr. Taylor, Mrs. Hyde, and Mrs. Gifford, who put in lots of time and hard work into arranging the logistics of the tournament; of printing and distributing written tests, scantrons, and ciphering packets; of organizing testing rooms; and of directing and working on many other tasks needed to run such a large tournament. Overall, the tournament ran extremely smoothly with very few errors, especially compared to last year. Again, thank you to all of the students and a special shout-out to the math team sponsors for allowing this to happen!

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As for the tournament itself, students from Vestavia did not compete, as they wrote the questions and had to work various jobs throughout the day, but many other schools participated. The tournament comprised both middle school and high school divisions, and schools were further divided into large school and small school divisions. Competitors took one of six exams based on their previous math classes taken. The exams were as follows:

• Middle School: 6th grade, Pre-Algebra, Algebra I

• High School: Geometry, Algebra II, Comprehensive

Comprehensive is a test made up of precalculus-level questions. Since this is the highest exam offered, this means that some students take this exam multiple times—when taking precalculus, calculus, and further classes. 

All competitors took a written test for their respective exam, which consisted of 25 multiple-choice questions that students were given 75 minutes to solve, with four points given per correct answer and one point deducted per incorrect answer, as well as four open-response tiebreaker questions. Individual placements were based solely on the written tests. 

Additionally, team results also factored in a speed-based ciphering round. Ciphering differed between middle school and high school exams: In middle school, all students took the ciphering exam in their testing rooms, and competitors were given four sets of five questions to answer in each time interval, with each question worth 5 points each regardless of when the student finished the questions. The top four scores from each school were then totaled and added to the sum of the four best written test scores from the school to determine placements. 

In high school ciphering, on the other hand, only four people competed for each school in the ciphering round of each exam. The high school ciphering rounds consisted of 5 questions per person given in 2 minute time intervals for each question. Competitors could finish and turn in the questions in the first minute for five points per correct answer or in the second minute for two points per correct answer. 

Trophies were then handed out to the top ten individuals and top ten teams per division for each exam.