Will Green, '05, David Friday, '04, and Brendan Schaenzer, '05, made College history earlier this year, as the first Albion College team to win the Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition. The team reunited on campus this fall to accept their Klein Cup (a vessell with only one surface), which will reside in the Albion College Mathematics/Computer Science department until the fall of 2005..  Photo by Dave Reimann.

LMMC Competition For the first time in the competition’s history, an Albion College team took home top honors in the 28th annual LMMC. Team members David Friday, ‘04, William Green, ‘06, and Brendan Schaenzer, ‘05, scored 63 points to secure first place over a Hope College team by one point. Green credits much of the team’s success to their strong motivation. “Dave has wanted to win one of these competitions for as long as I have known him,” reflects Green. “Luckily, Brendan and I were able to do enough to help him get the Klein cup on what was his last opportunity.” The LMMC is a harsh test, drawing its 10 problems from any areas of the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. Assistant professor Mark Bollman, one of the Albion team’s advisors, notes that "the problems are written by someone not associated with a participating school, and that person also grades the results. The team has to be prepared for anything, because they really have no idea, from year to year, what might be on the test." Winning the competition, explains Green, was also a factor of the team's depth.  “During the solution session, each one of our team members went up and showed our solutions for the other teams,” notes Green, “but most other teams only had one participant do that, if any.” 14 teams from nine Michigan colleges, including two Albion teams, participated in this year’s competition. In its 28-year history, all the champion teams have come from Hope, Kalamazoo, Calvin or Albion College.

Counting to 1

Math, Computer Science Students Finish First in Two Competitions
October 8, 2004

Head-to-head against their peers in the region, Albion College's math and computer science students have proven they possess some serious gray matter.  Three mathematics students recently accepted the traveling trophy for the Lower Michigan Mathematics Competition (LMMC) held last spring.  Earlier this month, three computer science majors took first place in the Consortium for Computer Science in Colleges (CCSC) local meet. 

CCSC Competition
Computer science majors James Hice, ‘05, Andy Lake, ‘07, Brendan Schaenzer, ‘05, comprised the winning CCSC competition team, solving the same number of problems as second-place finisher Millikin University, but with a better time.  The competition generally contains six to eight problems, many of which “would make a nice weekend assignment for beginning or intermediate computer science student,” explains Howard Whitston, visiting instructor in computer science and adviser for the Albion team. “Time is of the essence, as competitions are often decided by who finishes first."

“I was fortunate to have two naturally-gifted problem-solvers for teammates, who were able to come up with solutions when we needed them,” says Lake, explaining the team’s success. “From there, it was just a matter of translating those answers into code.”

The team now looks forward to the larger regional conference this November, where they will compete against more, and larger teams in the Midwest. “In November and anything can happen. As a computer science major I see 10 different scenarios: we either win or we don’t,” laughs Lake. “That’s a bad binary joke, sorry.”