The team of Chen Chen, '11, of Jiangsu, China, Yang Chen, '11, of Wuhan, China, and Mingjia Yang, '13, of Chengdu, China, finished fourth out of 50 teams from 20 colleges in six states entered in the Michigan Autumn Take-Home (MATH) Challenge. The Britons received 66 points out of a possible 100.

Albion's second team entered in the competition - Becca Putans, '10 of Grand Rapids, Rachel Kamischke, '11, of Traverse City, and Kathryn Wagner, '10, of Fort Wayne, Ind., - also finished in the top half of the field by scoring 30 points to place 25^th.

The MATH Challenge was a 10-question exam that lasted three hours. Mark Bollman, chair of Albion's mathematics and computer science department, said the most of the problems featured material in calculus, linear algebra, and discrete math problems.

"The challenge is figuring out the math needed to solve a particular problem," Bollman said. "The material is not sorted out so the students had to be ready to face anything they had learned in their mathematics lives.

"We are very happy (with the results of the MATH Challenge)," Bollman added. "A lot of the schools we competed against are the same schools we face in football, basketball, or volleyball. It is a great day when we can hang tough with these schools academically."