By:Laura Toto
Maria Szijj, the math supervisor of Hillsborough High School, designed a contest 15 years ago for Math Awareness Month and says she is surprised it has remained so popular through the years.
About of 400 students participated in the contest this year, which she said was a good turnout.
Dr. Szijj developed ten math questions in April for the students to answer. The names of students who answered them correctly were then placed into a bowl and the tenwinners were randomly chosen.
The questions were for all of the grade levels and were not highly difficult, Dr. Szijj said. Some problems involved Geometry, Algebra and Probability.
"It’s fun and there are puzzles associated with it," she said.
And it was a schoolwide project the questions were also posted for other faculty to take a shot at.
"It’s something to unify us as a school," Dr. Szijj said.
Another aspect of the contest included selecting winners for creating a mathematics button, two poems, artwork, a video, and a geometry booklet.
"We also want children to artistically express themselves," she said.
The contest also gets the entire math faculty department involved. In all there are 20 teachers, and regularly 12 teachers are submitting entries or helping to continue the process, Dr. Szijj said.
The winners of the math problems each received $5. The first-place winner of the mathematics art projects, Charles Daino, received $20, and the rest of the mathematics art projects winners won $10. The prize money was donated by Van Cleef Engineering and ShopRite on Route 206.
