Michelle Malkin » Are you smarter than the 6th-grade MathCounts champion?

Are you smarter than the 6th-grade MathCounts champion?

By Michelle Malkin • May 10, 2008 09:19 PM

The prestigious Lockheed Martin MATHCOUNTS National Competition took place yesterday.

You don’t get there by learning Everyday Math crap.

It’s the real deal.

The winner of the individual contest was an 11-year-old 6th-grader from Bellevue, Washington, Darryl Wu.

Here was the winning question. Can you solve it?

And, oh, by the way, the question was timed. Darryl came up with the answer in less than 45 seconds.

Question: A set of distinct positive integers has a total of 11 digits, and all the digits are ones. What is the smallest possible sum of the integers in the set?

NO PEEKING at the answer, which is on the MATHCOUNTS website (update: or right here from commenter DougT, who clocked in with the answer first at 9:31pm Eastern).

And as my math teachers always told me: Show your work.

P.S. If you don’t even understand the question, welcome to the club!

Posted in: Education

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#319673

On May 13th, 2008 at 10:57 am, Teddy Kennedy said:

errah, I cut class that day unfortunately it was drivers ed, errah.
#320025

On May 13th, 2008 at 1:51 pm, jukin said:

I get 2,047 in Binary.