How To Win MATHCOUNTS: Tips from the 1985 Winner of the Longest Running Middle-Grade Math Competition
In 1985, an Oklahoma 7th grader won the National MATHCOUNTS Competition. His name was Tim Kokesh. Our summer college intern, Sydney Tipton, talked with him recently about his experience with MATHCOUNTS and how to win the national competition.
Seventh-grade Tim Kokesh (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timkokesh/) took home the MATHCOUNTS trophy and his very first personal computer in the spring of 1985, when he became the individual national champion and solidified the first countdown round win for the Oklahoma MATHCOUNTS program.
Kokesh won the competition in 7th grade and then placed 10th the next year in 8th grade, proving his mathematical skills to be paramount again and again. After MATHCOUNTS, the winner went on to major in mathematics in college and then work a couple summer jobs that delved into programming, where he claims he was “bit by the bug”. The engineering bug.
Fifteen, the App
“I was bit when I was almost a senior in college,” Kokesh recalls. He began his career with math programming, then quickly moved up to iPhone programming, where his app Fifteen took off and topped charts as soon as it was released. Kokesh has now gone on to have worked and developed software and apps within several notable and impressive organizations, including but not limited to Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Smule and Google, and is currently working within his own software organization. Aqueous Software LLC is Kokesh’s own company, and here he has developed exciting new iPhone apps and continues to do so.
MATHCOUNTS Prize Leads to Career
It was the MATHCOUNTS program that gave him his very first personal computer; the one that he worked with all throughout high school and into his freshman year of college before he replaced it. “One of the prizes I got was a computer, Geico supplied a computer for the first prize.” Kokesh says. “I’m not sure if I would have been as active in programming if I wouldn’t have had my own computer.”
Kokesh was naturally skilled at problem solving even before the MATHCOUNTS program (“I wish I could say that I worked hard, but I’ve just always been good at math,” Kokesh admits), but agreed that his first personal computer played a role in his ambitions and the beginning of his career in software development and engineering. Although some of his knack for deciphering equations and patterns may have come naturally, Kokesh shares three important tips to get ahead of the other individuals in the countdown round of the MATHCOUNTS competition, and to remain competitive for the years to come: how to win MATHCOUNTS, if you will.
Tip #1
First off, he says you can never check your answers enough. “Check your answers, double check your answers, never be happy with your answers.” Kokesh instructs. “Make sure, especially with the more difficult questions.” He says that there will always be tricks and ways to make competitors slip up if they’re not stable in a concept, and warns students to stay aware, especially when checking and double checking answers.
Tip #2
His second tip may not be as obvious: being brief and knowing your strengths. Kokesh advises to move through the problems you know quickly, leaving the more challenging work to the end. “If there’s a problem where it’s going to take more than a few seconds on the answer, just check it and just say ‘okay, I’m going to come back to this one’”, says the winner. “Don’t worry about answering every question on the first pass, I didn’t and no one I knew did. Just try to do the easy ones first and come back and actually do the hard ones.”
So he suggests coming back to the problems you struggle with, and checking all your problems at the end if you have time left over.
Tip #3
Simple enough, but Kokesh’s third tip revolves around catching the tricks and shortcuts in problem sets. “Do the old tests, find the patterns, because there’s always going to be patterns.” He remarks. The 1985 champion advises to look at the challenging questions in the real competition with that mentality. Yes, he says, “they are going to try to trick you on some of the questions, but at the same time try to find the patterns. If you find the patterns you’re 95% of the way there.” He explains how knowing the shortcuts could be the difference between success and loss. “My 8th grade year they had one question…if you knew the trick, it takes you maybe seconds. If you don’t know the trick, it’s actually tough.”
Three points aside, “after that it’s really just a matter of avoiding stupid mistakes and knowing a few extra things.” The past winner shares.
Bonus Tips
A few extra things like great pacing during countdown questions, extreme focus under pressure and the expansive math knowledge that comes with the MATHCOUNTS champion title. The road to victory is difficult, but if you apply yourself and have what it takes, you could add your name to the roster of competition winners as the 41st MATHCOUNTS individual champion.
To learn more about MATHCOUNTS Oklahoma please visit https://oef.org/mathcounts-oklahoma/.