From Dec. 5 to 12 2020, the Lexington High School math team hosted the 2020 Lexington Math Tournament Fall (LMT Fall), a math tournament for middle schoolers. The tournament attracted around 360 individuals and 130 teams.

The Lexington Math Tournament (LMT), held every fall and spring, seeks to bridge the gap between middle school competition math and high school math leagues and contests, recognizing that the transition can be difficult. LMT also seeks to address the lack of math competition opportunities available to middle schoolers.

Due to the pandemic, the 2020 LMT Fall was held virtually to ensure that students from different regions could all participate.    

“Previously participants from all around the world would have to travel to the designated arena for the tournaments, but during this unprecedented period the ideal alternative is to continue the event virtually, ” Richard Chen, a senior and a captain of the math team of LHS, said. 

Leading up to the competition, mini-events such as puzzle hunts and math games were held. Additionally, two guest speakers were invited to the 2020 LMT Fall to provide insight for parents and students into developments in the field of mathematics. Po-Shen Leoh, a professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University and the national coach of the United States’ International Math Olympiad team, spoke about how he used his personal math competition background to develop the world’s first pandemic network radar app, NOVID. The other guest speaker was Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language. Wolfram spoke about the future of math and computational thinking.

Instead of LMT’s traditional multi-round competition format, the 2020 LMT Fall had a team round solved remotely over the span of the tournament, followed by a live, timed team round.

Euhan Kim, a senior and a captain of the LHS math team, wrote in a statement to The Musket that he “thought that the fall LMT was a great success” because he “felt these young students having fun and enjoying the competition.”

From the 2020 LMT Fall, the LHS math team raised $1500, which was donated to provide relief to health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The LHS math team plans to host the LMT again this upcoming spring. 

“…We hope to bring more joy and exciting problems to middle school students around the country in our 12th annual LMT Spring later this year,” Kim wrote.