Stumped on our math question?

This week, we heard from a Young Achiever with a special gift of solving equations and excelling in math.

After all, Lloyd Liu scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT - as a seventh grader.

In the story, we challenged readers with a practice math question from Lloyd's MathCounts School Handbook.

We posed this question:
Q: If a set of seven positive integers has a mean of 5, what is the greatest possible integer in the set?
The answer: 29.

A few of you were stumped, so we went back to Lloyd's math teacher, Andria Sullivan for an explanation:

For seven positive integers to have a mean of 5, the sum of the integer must be 7*5=35. If one of the integers is to be as great as possible the other 6 would have to be the least possible meaning 1. Therefore 1+1+1+1+1+1+29=35. So, the greatest integer is 29.

Want to continue to test your math skills?
Here is another problem to keep you busy:

Q: Marika shoots a basketball until she makes 20 shots or until she has made 60 percent of her shots, whichever happens first. After she has made 10 of her first 20 shots, how many more shots in a row does she have to make to be finished?
See below for answer.

Question source: MATHCOUNTS School Handbook 2004-05.
Photo: Lloyd Liu, 13, a seventh grade student at Randolph Middle. Photo by Brittany Penland.
Question answer: 5.

Indian Trail team needs votes to advance in math challenge

Four homeschool Indian Trail friends are putting their brains together to collectively compete in the first annual Reel Math Challenge, a video contest centered around solving math problems while integrating technology.

The competition is sponsored by MATHCOUNTS, a nation-wide program for middle school students that promotes mathematics achievement. In the challenge, teams of four will chose one problem in their MATHCOUNTS School Handbook and will teach that problem in a video they create.

The videos are then uploaded onto the challenge website where the public can cast their vote for best submission by "liking" the video.

Currently clenching the first place spot are Luke Muma, Strider Frank, Josh Forster and Parker Garrison - members of the Peers Harnessing Ideas (P.H.I.) team. The acronym is also a play on the mathematics term for the golden ratio, Parker points out.

Judges will then review the top 20 videos and select four teams to advance to the 2012 MATHCOUNTS National Competition in Orlando.

The P.H.I. team is now asking for help from the community to advance in the competition. To vote for the P.H.I. team, "like" their video.

In the future:

Continue to read Young Achievers for full-length article on the P.H.I team.

And in the meantime, do you have someone in mind who fits the Young Achievers mold? Email me at youngachievers@charlotteobserver.com, or call 704-358-6043.

Photo: Luke Muma (front left), Strider Frank, Parker Garrison (back left) and Josh Forster hold up doorstops they created for their math video submission. Photo by Brittany Penland.