Education

Hong Analytics Education

"During his 2nd grade, my son Leo was getting bored about math at school. During the following summer, he started getting very interested in math from some books he was reading. He was asking me many math questions. I thought I should challenge him a bit, so I let him learn some math way above his grade level. By the end of that summer, he basically mastered 5th grade math. It was obvious to me that those traditional elementary school math problems were not challenging enough to him, so I showed him some AMC8 problems. Although he didn't do well in the first try, he loved those problems! His first attempt placed him about bottom 15% among the contestants. He wanted to get better and to reach top 25% in the contest, so I started to give him more and more AMC8 problems. Meanwhile I asked him to continue learning middle school math. It took 77 days of after-school math training before he took his first AMC8 test as a 3rd grader. After the test, he told me that he should be able to get on the achievement roll*. A month later, the results were announced. He got 16 out 25 questions correct. His name was indeed on the achievement roll. Among the 87 U.S. contestants in 4th grade and below on the achievement roll, Leo's score was the highest in Charlotte and the third highest in North Carolina. I think this success is repeatable, so I'd like to offer education services to help other kids passionate about math."

* Achievement roll recognizes students in 6th grade and below who scored 15 and above. In 2019 AMC8, the achievement roll marks about top 10% of the contestants.

-- Tao Hong, PhD