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By Ethan Lee
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
On Wednesday, December 7, Needham High School hosted the Greater Boston Mathematics League (GBML), a mathematics competition involving schools across the state. The GBML, carried out over the span of the school year, consists of five different meets, of which the Needham High School edition was the third.
Held in the high school cafeteria, the GBML at NHS drew in participants from five different high schools.
As students were received at the high school, the cafeteria was prepared for six rounds made up of three math problems each. Five of these were individual rounds based on various mathematical concepts and topics such as radicals, logarithms, and complex numbers in trigonometric form. All students lastly participated in the team round, in which each school grouped together for three final problems.
The Needham High School math team placed second, finishing closely behind Wayland High School.
Currently, Needham High School stands at second in the GBML “West” region after coming fourth and second, respectively, in the first and second GBML meets of the year.
In the past, the NHS math team has reached the state playoffs by placing within the top five of over twenty competing schools. Needham High School has also consistently won the “West” region in previous years thanks to strong performances. In other recent competitions, the NHS math team competed in the Massachusetts Mathematics Olympiad, a statewide individual competition. The team also entered two teams in the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament, an international mathematics competition.
The team’s next GBML meet will be on January 11 at Wellesley High School.
