At MIT, 268 take part in world's largest math competition for girls
October 21, 2019
"The girls are some of the 276 middle and high school math enthusiasts who descended on campus the weekend of Oct. 12-13 for the Math Prize for Girls event. The mathematics competition, hosted at MIT for the ninth time, is the world’s largest math prize for young women high school age or younger. On Sunday, they settled into their seats to solve 20 math questions, but the night before they bonded over cake and games.
"Math Prize for Girls was started 11 years ago by Ravi Boppana PhD ’86, a research affiliate in the Department of Mathematics, and Arun Alagappan, the founder of Advantage Testing, to address the gender gap in math. Inspired by their daughters — Boppana has one (longtime volunteer Meena), and Alagappan has three — they created the competition to celebrate girls’ love of math and to build a community of alumnae that encourage women to pursue math. 'Ravi and I founded Math Prize, knowing that as long as they were supported, women would persevere,' said Alagappan at the award ceremony."