Math problems hurt your head? To this whiz kid, they're play
Math teacher Jeff Adams has a routine he follows when he grades exams: He always picks Elizabeth Synge's test first.
"That's so I can make sure my own answers are correct," he explains. "She doesn't get them wrong, but I do from time to time."
Indeed, Elizabeth, who lives in Lexington, is almost always right when it comes to the math tests that are put before students of her age group. The 13-year-old had little trouble answering questions correctly as she outscored most other competitors to emerge as the nation's top middle-school female mathematician in the MATHCOUNTS contest, held in Fort Worth this month.
Elizabeth placed ninth overall in the individual standings among a field of 228 middle school students from all 50 states in the annual brain battle sponsored by
"Elizabeth's success doesn't surprise me at all," says math teacher James Tanton, Elizabeth's mentor at Math Circle, an enrichment program designed for gifted students. "She has the kind of mathematical maturity you see in graduate students, combined with an utter delight for the subject, all the elements that make her awe-inspiring."
Home-schooled since the fourth grade, Elizabeth now attends Voyagers, an all-volunteer organization in Acton that provides resources to home-schooling families, with special attention paid to the needs of gifted students. Founded in 1999 by a group of home-schooling parents, Voyagers now has more than 80 participating families, and thus far appears to be a good fit for the young teen.
"I was always fascinated with recognizing patterns and playing with numbers since I can remember," says Elizabeth, who hints that a career in mathematics or linguistics might be on her horizon. "My favorite classes at Voyagers are obviously math, and it's that mathematical part of language that has me interested in linguistics so much."
Even as a toddler, she demonstrated a mathematical curiosity far beyond her years. Her mother, Laura Yaker, a Dartmouth College-trained computer scientist, recalls observing Elizabeth playing with manipulative blocks, commonly used in math education, with obvious delight at age 2.
"But what she was also doing was adding and subtracting with them," says Yaker. "A while later, she showed me a grid equally divisible by 3 and said, 'You and I and Daddy could share this without anything left over.' "
Elizabeth and her family were frustrated with the public schools, where, they said, the answer to fostering her obvious aptitude was to give her more worksheets and a few extra puzzles. Since her tutoring began at age 8 and home schooling at 9, Elizabeth has breezed through an advanced high school math curriculum and much college coursework, including multivariable calculus and linear algebra. She scored a perfect 800 on the Math II SAT at age 11 and the highest grade on the Advanced Placement BC Calculus exam at 12.
Next year, when she starts at Boston University Academy, designed for gifted high school students, she'll tackle differential equations with college math majors, along with ancient Greek, physics, English, history, and performing arts.
"I won't say Elizabeth hides her genius, but her brilliance is so nicely balanced by her easy-going and light hearted nature about everything, not just mathematics," says Adams, her teacher in the Voyagers program.
According to both Adams and Tanton, Elizabeth's fun attitude with numbers is the sort that separates math technicians from pioneers. "That joy is what takes a mathematician to places we haven't yet seen -- groundbreaking kind of discovery," says Tanton.
As an example of her puckish nature, the girl recently brought a stuffed toy tiger dressed in formal attire as her date to a Voyagers function. "Elizabeth has a very ironic and cool sense of humor," says Adams.
And staying cool under fire certainly was important in the "Countdown" round of MATHCOUNTS, according to the competition's national marketing director, Joseph Bremner.
"In this one-on-one, head-to-head format, much of the time the kids are giving correct answers to complex problems even before the moderator is finished reading the questions," he said, adding that Elizabeth was sharp, poised, and unfazed by the pressure of the competition. In fact, she appeared to have had a good time in the contest, he said.
The top four students in each state competition in March earned the opportunity to form a team and advance to the MATHCOUNTS national finals in Fort Worth.
Joining Elizabeth on the Massachusetts team were Kevin Wen, from Diamond Middle School in Lexington; Carl Lian, from Jonas Clarke School in Lexington; David Field, from Andover West Middle School; and coach Josh Frost, of Newmarket, N.H., a teacher at Jonas Clarke School. The Massachusetts team finished sixth among the 50 state teams and seven others from Washington, D.C., and US territories.
Participants are scored and ranked both individually and as teams after several rounds of various kinds of questions. Elizabeth's individual score was the top girl's tally, behind eight boys. Her teammates, Lian, Field, and Wen, placed 16th, 29th, and 54th, respectively, in the individual rankings.
The competition over, it's time for Elizabeth to return to her school routine. Her clarinet and tennis racket compete for space in her book bag along with her graphing calculator and laptop computer. Both will be with her this summer for six weeks when she heads to Hampshire College in Amherst for some fun with topology, a study of mathematics that is an extension of geometry, among a larger math menu.
"One of the reasons I'm really looking forward to Boston University Academy in the fall is I get to take fencing," says Elizabeth. "And I kind of like the idea of playing with swords."
