MFS News

Math for Service had a wonderful 2017! Thank you to everyone who volunteered or participated at our events in the past year. Read on for a recap of what each MfS organization was up to in 2017:  OC Math Circle started up its guest lecture series again with a talk on prime numbers by Dr. Daqing Wan and Jerry Li. OCMC's High School Math Club team also attended the Caltech Harvey Mudd Math Competition. They hosted the Thanksgiving Math Tournament in November, brought the AMC 8 test to over 200 local students, and successfully continued offering regular events, including Elementary School Math Club, Middle School Math Club, High School Math Club, Santa Ana Math Club meetings, and Math Fun Nights. OCMC is looking forward to collaborating with the World Cube Association for another Rubik's Cube Tournament in 2018. Click here to visit OCMC's website . OC Scholar expanded its journalism series for students in grade 6-8 to cover a broader range of topics, including &quo

November 14th, 2017 marked the annual and nationwide AMC 8 competition with one of many test locations being hosted in Irvine, California by the Orange County Math Circle. For many students across America, math at school is more than enough. However, for over 200 young math enthusiasts all over Southern California, the AMC 8 was the perfect opportunity to put their mathematical wits to the test, and the pristine moment to show the world their arithmetic might. The American Math Competition for 8th graders, more commonly referred to as just the AMC 8 is the annual 75-minute, 25 question competition hosted nationwide to test the brightest students across the country. Many participants have been studying diligently in preparation for the exam as many of them will be ineligible to take the exam next year. Although the exam is targeted for 8th graders, the exam consisted of a huge plethora of brilliant mathematicians, some of which who are only in the 3rd grade. Results, whic

Volunteers, Girl Scouts, and STEM aren’t words that would usually go together, but the passion of OC Science and AGMT (All Girls Math Tournament) volunteers helped to bring out the excitement of science and math related topics in every Girl Scout of Orange County. October 15th, 2017 marked the annual Girl Scouts of Orange County STEM Exposition, an event aimed at instilling a sense of passion for STEM in all young girls across Orange County. OC Science and AGMT were two of the more than 30 different organization present at the event, which took place on the beautiful campus of California State University, Fullerton. Along with many companies pioneering the path of modern advances such as Google, SpaceX, and Microsoft, OC Science worked with leading STEM companies to bring vital STEM experiences to girls across Orange County. Volunteers were all smiles, enthusiastically waiting to share the activities and experiments that they had planned to teach science and mathema

On December 7th, the beginning of the national Computer Science Education Week, OC Coder hosted its second annual Hour of Code. Classrooms were decorated with motivational quotes from President Barack Obama and many influential tech CEOs. There were two sessions this year, with the first session teaching languages including Scratch, Python, Java, Blockly, and Lightbot. The second session helped with AP Computer Science, and also taught Scratch, JavaScript, Python, and Swift. Scratch was taught using the popular Angry Birds characters and students created two simple games using blocks in Scratch, including if statements, variables, costumes, looks, motions, and more. In Python Code Combat, kids enjoyed learning Python through an interactive game. They learned to write code to issue commands to a character to complete a variety of tasks, including avoid the spikes, defend the village, build a fence, and much more. In Java, students used Codecademy to introduce them to loops, if-el

Ready to share their passion for STEM and science, OC Science volunteers eagerly gathered at Ardent Academy on October 13, 2017, prepared to host their first ever Meteorology Fun Night of the year. Excited to help young minds learn about various principles of meteorology in a meaningful and exciting way, hands-on activities and interactive learning took precedence at this bi-monthly event. With glistening smiles and effulgent passion, volunteers enthusiastically ushered students into an activity room to carry out the various experiments they had planned. Activities and experiments such as the “Tsunami Model” and “Rain Clouds” were a huge hit! The tsunami models showed students how natural disasters occur when forces of nature act upon coastlines. Students participated in creating a realistic diorama of a shoreline, being drastically altered as a direct result of tsunamis. Other events such as “Rain Clouds” used everyday items like shaving cream and food coloring to conv

On September 30, OC Hacker successfully hosted its first USA Computing Olympiad training session. More commonly known as USACO, participants new to the competitive scene were introduced to the competition and its range of topics including a brief summary of other competitive programming venues. Participants had the opportunity to learn about a specific algorithm used to determine if certain points on a grid are connected. In addition, students explored Union-Find and solved practice questions to enhance their understanding of the algorithms, culminating in a competition to showcase their abilities. Starting in the winter, participants will have the opportunity to compete in 3 tournaments which are scheduled to occur in December, January, and February. Sign up for USACO’s next training session to prepare yourself for upcoming contests, classes, and competitions!