A little info on the “American High School Mathematics Examination”

Fifty Fifth Post: A little info on the “American High School Mathematics Examination”

I was going through some old papers that I had collected looking for things to organize into a scrap book when I found and old practice test of the “American High School Mathematics Examination.” This is a test to find “students with unusual mathematical ability.” And when they say unusual they mean wiz kid.

I took one of these test for practice in high school. Even now these problems are tough. (No I can’t pass the test in case your wondering.) To advance to the next level a student must answer at least 10 questions correct and miss none in 90 minutes. The student gets 2 points for questions left unanswered and 5 points for each answered. This is no easy task.

But I am not looking at the test to become the next national champion. I am just curious on how I score after all the math and science class I have had and have a little fun. When we are introduced to math in textbooks, we are usually given a clue to the answer because the problems are placed in order. This helps when learning, but a problem is exponentially more difficult when the is no clue to what type of problem it is. This is what application problems are for. This nice little hint as to what the problem is, is missing on a cumulative final.

But back to the fun of solving some puzzling problems. There is often a “key” to solving certain problems. If it is know how one works, the same principle could be applied to other problems. So instead of working on problem solving skills, the test taker is looking for patterns in the test. I doubt this method would be successful, because the test are in a series in which you must pass on to get to the other. Also I think the problems could be changed enough to hide it’s “key” without understanding how the problem works.

I had a hard time finding the official home page. So just do a search for AHSME. But in my searches I found a large math community at http://www.artofproblemsolving.com . The site also shows how to get and use LATEX.