MathCounts Club

MATHCOUNTS is a national middle school coaching and competitive mathematics program that promotes mathematics achievement through a series of fun and engaging "bee" style contests.  The program exists in all 50 states plus U.S. territories and the Department of Defense and State Department schools.  The purpose of MATHCOUNTS is to challenge students to use higher level mathematical thinking and problem solving skills in order to be a part of the school, chapter, state, and possibly national competition.

MATHCOUNTS competitions are provided at four levels: School, Chapter, State and National. Throughout the school year, the coaches work with students on the problems provided by the MATHCOUNTS handbook. Around January, the team will hold a school competition which assists the coaches in determining the students who will represent the school at the Chapter Competition in February. From there, the top teams and top individuals progress to the State Competition in March. The four top-scoring individuals and the top team coach progress to the Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National Competition in May. 

Each competition consists of four parts: the Sprint, Target, Team and Countdown Rounds. The Sprint Round has 30 questions, and students have 40 minutes to complete them. The Target Round consists of 8 questions, which are distributed to the students two at a time. Students have 6 minutes to complete each pair of problems. The Team Round has 10 problems for the team to work together within the 20 minute time limit. The top 25% of individuals, up to a maximum of 10, proceed to the Countdown Round, an oral round in which students compete head-to-head. 

As for the FMS MATHCOUNTS team, our goal is to get as many students interested and involved in the wonderful opportunities that this club brings, as well as progress to the highest level of competition possible.  Last year, we were able to take first place at the regional competition which allowed us to compete at the state level.  We want to continue to strive for excellence and work hard to ensure that our team competes at the highest level possible again this year!