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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.mathcounts.org/programs/national-competition-participants?field_nc_team_value=va&field_nc_grade_value=All&field_nc_participant_type_value=All

Congrats to the State winners![/quote]

Where can we find the state results? top ten teams/individuals?[/quote]
Longfellow,Carson,Cooper,Nysmith[/quote]

It seems unfair that the Fairfax and NOVA chapters are (almost) always the top in state.

Also, getting third in Chapter (e.g. Basis this year, Cooper other years) really hurts chances for some bright kids who might have made state otherwise.[/quote]

It's unfair to to the kids in Fairfax. 
Mathcounts uses quotas, so talented kids from "top" schools don't get to go to Chapter *at all*, due to the per school quota. Kids from schools who don't have 12 talented or interested students get to go, with school or independently, no matter their talent level. [/quote]

Yes, the artificial skimming at the school level is bad for everyone.  Two of the VA nationals team did not make top 5 at chapter, so there's obviously variation from test to test. Maybe the 6th (or 13th) highest scoring student at Carson had a bad day at the school level and didn't make the school team, but could have done better at chapter.

AMC alleviated this problem by giving two (or four) AIME qualifying tests per year. Mathcounts should also expand the number of students who can go to chapter and state.[/quote]

Mathcounts is not really a math competition like AMC. Its goal is not to find the best math problem solvers.

Mathcounts is an advertising campaign for math and for Mathcounts sponsors.

That's why Mathcounts uses geographic quotas at the local, state, and national level, and why the overall national winner (and some.state winners) is determined by a fast-paced trivia guessing game. 
[/quote]

I wouldn't call the head to head competition a fast-paced trivia game. DS has started watching the old competitions on YouTube and the questions are not trivial. It is pretty impressive that the kids can answer some of them as fast as they do. I know that there are tricks and tips that the kids learn that help them solve the problems quickly but many of them take the kids almost the full amount of given time. I have seen a good number answered incorrectly by both kids. Overall, their performance is pretty impressive. It feels a lot like the spelling bee.

I doubt that increasing the number of kids in the state level competition is going to change much of anything. The schools that produce the top teams have a lot of kids that are really into math and study hard for the competition. They have a larger pool to draw from. I would guess that the kids who do well in math counts go on to do well on the AMC10 and AMC 12 and the competitions that are selected based on those results. [/quote]

PP here. I wasn't advocating increasing the number at state, although I would condone that. I was advocating for more kids at chapter : right now, only ~12 kids get to go to chapter from Longfellow. The 13th might be really good and I'm sure many of those "13s" go on to qualify for the AIME.  On the other hand, many of Longfellow's team of 12 decide not to continue math after MS and don't try for the AIME.

Given the stochasticness described above, why not be more inclusive at the chapter level? It would not come at any net cost (and may actually be revenue positive for mathcounts)[/quote]

There are good reasons to restrict teams to 12 competitors each at the chapter level.  In some chapters, one school is a powerhouse, and the rest aren't especially competitive.  If the powerhouse school could bring 20 or more kids to chapter, then they'd crowd other schools out from even having a chance to get kids to the state round.  Schools that feel like they have no chance of ever qualifying anyone for state often stop participating altogether.

One state that I know of has only 4 chapters, which each one sending around 25 kids to state.  One school in one of those chapters generally qualifies its entire 12 person delegation to state, leaving 13 spots for everyone else.  If they were allowed to bring 20 kids, they'd likely grab at least another 6 spots.

A lot of the most competitive schools don't rely on just the school round for picking their teams, but instead consider AMC 10 scores as well as scores from other competitions.  They can also make the school round more of an event, so that all of the kids in the mathcounts club get to feel like they're having a more official mathcounts experience.  [/quote]

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