Five CHS students plan to attend the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT) tomorrow at Harvard University.

HMMT registration director David Liang ‘14 said via email, “HMMT is a biannual math contest that is hosted by a coalition of Harvard and MIT students. There is a November tournament that is geared more toward local teams and those who may be new to competition math.  The February tournament is for experienced ‘mathletes’ and is regarded to be one of the most difficult high school math contests out there.”

Caleb He, HMMT competitor and junior, said, “(HMMT) brings together many of the top math students in the nation to compete relatively casually.”

According to He, organized teams across the country will apply to compete. Teams will compete together, and their scores will be based on both team and individual events.

He also said there will be multiple subject areas, and different members of each team will compete in the various areas of math that they are most comfortable with. The final team score will be a sum of the individual test scores and will be used to determine the placement of the team.

Liang said HMMT will start with a Friday night social event where the competitors can get to know each other and attend events hosted by the sponsors of HMMT.

According to Liang, HMMT is on Saturday and consists of individual rounds, lunch, team rounds and the Guts round, as well as an awards ceremony at the end.

“We’ve all been working individually on mathematics just in general, so that in itself serves as preparation for the competition. But, we will still have to familiarize ourselves with the tests so we might use a couple weekends,” Liang said. “In some sense, the test serves as very good preparation for the more serious math contests so that would mean AMC and AIME. I also think it is a very good chance to visit Harvard, MIT; some of those campuses in the Boston area.”

With regard to the competition, Liang said, “I most look forward to the actual event.  I not only get to see our hard work come to fruition, but also get to meet and interact with many eager math students and teachers who are excited about math.”