UIL

Christian just joined a math club/team of UIL (University Interscholastic League). It is a part of the gifted and talented program at his school. They meet after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays and have math competitions on select Saturdays. Those competitions are all day affairs - 8am to 4pm. His coach, Ms M, is letting him get used to things before having him go to competition. Fine by him because he doesn't want to get up that early on a Saturday morning!

They learn all sorts of shortcuts for problems and regularly learn how to do 80 math problems in 10 minutes. Problems that include adding all the numbers 1 thru 100 (1+2+3+4+ .... +99+100=????). Do you know how to figure this out? 1+100=101, 2+98=101, 3+98=101, 4+97=101,.... 50+51=101 ---- there are only 50 equations this way and they all add up to 101 so the quick way is 101 x 50 = 5050.

Needless to say I'm quite proud!