Coral 队：关楚玏，莫嘉筠，邹天羽，陈元，韩昱晨，葛钺洋
Jamie Jiayun Mo:
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Math League Summer Camp
My favorite lecture throughout the whole camp is definitely the "Theory of Hawes" lecture on Sunday. The professor uvealed the math thinking behind classic games like tic-tac-toe through an entertaining way. My least favorite lecture is the cryptology owe, I am actually really interested in cryptology and I attended a three-week summer camp entirely about cryptology. That's why I feel the professor didn't successfully highlight the fun part of cryptology; instead, the only briefly touched on time type of the cirzheet.
My favorite competition is clearly the relay round. This is probably the most difficult round, and it requires great team collaboration. If one person out of the four people used too much time or didn't get the correct answer, then the whole group fails. The part 1 liked about it is the intense passing of index cards through the course of 13 minutes, as well as the joyfulness of the whole group after scoring some points. As a contrast, I don't really like the second part of the individual round. Well obviously because it is a bit hard, and also because an individual competition doesn't require communication nor collaboration, everyone just sits there on their own and solve their own question, like the first round and second qualification round of the competition, which is actually a bit monotonous.
I feel that the food here is pretty decent, especially breakfast, the only food that is a bit weird is the rice with lemon, which tastes "complicated." If the lunch line could be shorter, it will be even better.
Our dormitory is WAY TOO COLD on the first few days, but we slowly got used to the temperature. We weren't able to turn off the air conditioner because there is a sticky note beside the air conditioner that told us not to do so. Besides, the room is also super dark, because our room's window is facing the cafeteria, so no sunlight could pass in. The darkness is bad for our eyes if we are reading or looking at our phones.
The two counselors of our group, Mosam and Juan, are indeed amazing. They took us to the bookstore, basketball courts, and Starbucks. That's why you can always hear Team 15 from their "yeet"s wherever they've been.
When talking about the differences between China and the United States, the first thing coming into my mind is the way we learn math, Chinese public schools taught math by letting students practice the same type of question over and over, but the US focuses more on the real-life application of math. However, because I go to an international school with IB curriculum, I feel more similarities than differences. We also learn math in English, and the mathematical thinkings we learned in school are very similar to the lectures in the past few days.
Tianyu Zou:
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A week in Math League Summer Camp
During the past several days, I had a great time in the college of New Jersey. I learned a lot in the Math League Summer Tournament. The experience I had here was a lot more important than certificates and prizes.
In the Math League Summer Tournament, there were 4 types of competitions, which included speed round, team round, individual round, and relay round. My favorite one was the relay round. It was divided into three small rounds, each with four questions. Jamie, Lisa, Caleb and me formed the group 15 A. I was the first "player" of my team because if held the easiest question. I think to solve the questions in a limited time and pass the answer around was "very fun". My group got one answer correct and I am very proud of it. My least favorite competition was individual round because it was very hard and I got none of the 10 questions correct.
Other than write test papers, there were many lectures everyday. They were very interesting and I love them. My favorite lecture was the one from Glen Whitney. He introduced the snub Dodecahedron to us and all of the students actually made a big dodecahedron together. It was a combination of many vertices (foam balls) and edges (wooden sticks). In these I periods he talked about the structure of the big snub dodecahedron, which is many pentagons and equilateral triangles. The method to calculate the measure of angles and lengths were very complicated and involved the matrix algebra to solve it. So Mr. Whitney done it for us and handed out clear instruction papers. We only needed to "dig" holes on the foam balls and color the wooden sticks. These were quite easy, the real hard part for this was to build up the dodecahedron and put all of the small parts together. A small group of teachers and students did it together. The final dodecahedron had been accidentally destroyed and cracked when people tried to move it. However, the picture still looks fascinated. I enjoyed this lecture and it was really fun, I love it.
The food in TCNJ was not as delicious as I expected. I used to believe the food in my school's cafeteria was the most "boring" food in the world. However, I changed my mind. The chef here always put many weird stuff into the rice in order to make it taste ridiculous, like cheese and many unknown spice. The vegetable stew was full of the flavor of "nature". It was tasteless and a little bitter. However, there might be people that like it. My favorite foods are burger, hot dog, and french fries.
Dormitory in The Eickhaff Hall was good. The only thing that was not perfect was the room temperature. The air conditioner was working crazy and continued to make my room colder and colder. I couldn't even turn it off. As a result, I woke up in the middle of night, because of the cold air. At last, I used a plastic bag to cover the evil hole on top of the wall to decrease the amount of cold air coming out.
In the whole camp, my favorite counselor was Mosam Naik and she is the best counselor I've ever met. She is very responsible and went to my room every night to ensure my safety. She treats us gently and Mosam is in my heart, forever and ever. Wang is also the best counselor and he is very enthusiastic, of any time.
After 2 weeks of life in US, I found out that there are many similarities and difference between China and United States, many in cultural areas. The one I cared about the most is food. You can find a fast food restaurant almost everywhere in US. In China, there are also many fast food restaurants such as McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, etc. However, in my opinion the Chinese version is more delicious. Also, the tools people use to eat are different. Chinese use chopsticks, eastern people use folks and knives. You can always find a Chinese food restaurant in China, but there are less Chinese food restaurant in US (of course) and I do not like the taste very much. Another big difference is the indoor temperature. The air conditioner works very well in US and Americans do not feel cold at all. At the same time, I was just shivering and looked out blankly.
I had a good time in the Math League Summer Tournament and I hope I can come here next year also!
Yuan Chen:
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F: I like the team competition, because it can improve our team ability.
Less F: Speed competition, because we do not have much time to do the question, we need do it very fast.
F: lecture: Poker Lecture. It's interesting for us, and we can use the ability in our life.
Less F: digital lecture. I think it was too boring, make people want to go sleep.
F: Food the Italian hollow powder.
Less F: the lemon rice.
Less F: dorm, I hope we can get flip flop in our dorm. And I hope the sheets can be bester.
F: we get the desk and wifi in our dorm.
F: Counselors: I think our two counselors all is good. They are interesting, sometime whole the joke with us. And take us to play sport. And they are responsible.
The difference between China and America.
In China we are what the teacher teaches, we will write it down, but in America, we have the teamwork, can improve our team ability.
Chule Guan:
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Favorite competition: team.
It's fun because we doing questions together, and we can talk with each other.
Least favorite: relay.
It's very nervous when you doing that questions because you can't do it wrong.
Favorite lectures: The pocker teacher, It's fun.
Least: multiplication, it's boring.
Food: I like everything.
Dorms: It's perfect.
Counselors: very nice, they are care about us.
Different between China and America: you have more free time, and people is nice.
Yueyang Ge:
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Favorite competition: relay. It's fun to pass the answers and solve the problem one by one.
Least competition: team. It's too difficult.
Favorite lecture: The excited and boring football game. The content of the lecture is really interesting.
Least favorite lecture: The multiplication. It's useless.
Food: different from China but really great.
Dorms: a little cold when sleeping.
Counselors: good, they take good care of us.
Different: more open and fire.
Yuchen Han:
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Favorite competition: speed round, challenging and exciting.
Least favorite competition: team round.
Favorite lecture: counting, fun and interesting.
Least favorite lecture: is the multiplication harder than addition? boring.
Food: usually good, sometimes strange (lemon rice).
Dorms: noisy (some strange fan's sound), dark.
Counselors: good!!! nice!!! BEST COUNSELOR: Mosam!!!
Difference of US & China: clamp, clean air.