By Anna Mefford
This past Friday the 28th of October, I was lucky enough to meet with Mr. Butler, otherwise known as Math Man. He advises the Math Team/Club. I also met with the students and the president of the Math Club/Team and got an insider view of what it is like.
Mr. Butler was wearing a math equation shirt Halloween shirt, and math shoes! This is his second year at Lovett. He was previously at Westminister for 2 years although he didn’t do their math team. Before that, he was in Minnesota where their math team competed nationally.
This is the first year of the math team. Lovett has had a math club for a while, and they practice with the math team, but they’re trying to bring the team back. The only difference is that the team competes.
So far they have 15 people, mainly freshmen and sophomores, and they are looking for some more seniors and juniors. Their goal is to have 10 in each grade, which Mr. Butler thinks will happen, especially because this year has gone very well!
They meet every Monday during lunch and just have fun doing math problems. They took a competition test last week. Sometimes all the students take the same test and sometimes they take different ones.
On this test, the team earned a score of 18 out of 30, which according to Mr. Butler is pretty good. The questions are not just calculus specific, or algebra. “It’s just…here are a few problems solve them!” he said. Some are very easy and some are very difficult.
Only the top five scores count on a given test, so it is very low-stress and if you’re having a bad day that’s ok! Two individuals got 5 out of the 6 problems correct, so big congratulations to them.
Miles Philips is the president of the club/team. He says it’s really, chill and he very much recommends it. I also talked with Christina Dehabre and the students at her table. They love the club/team, and agree that it’s super chill, and a great way to make new friends.
While it’s chill, they do solve problems, sometimes at meetings, and sometimes with packets at home. According to sophomore Gisella Brok, “They’re more challenging than what you get in math classes because they’re trying to get you to think more, sometimes about stuff you might not have learned yet.”
One big aspect of the club/team is that the teachers aren’t there to give you the answers. It’s more of a self-challenge and mind game. This gives the students a really fun time trying to solve them. It also gives them more self-confidence knowing that they did that completely on their own.
And that’s no small feat. Even the teachers can find some of the problems difficult. “The last question on the last test, me and Mr. Amar looked at it, and said, ‘Ooh, I’m not doing that one.”
