This past Saturday, junior and math team member Jiedong Duan tied for first with New Trier for two events at the ICTM Regionals held at Niles West.

For one of the events, Duan competed in the Algebra II category and tied with New Trier by gaining a high test score.

Duan gained his second victory in the oralist competition. His topic concerned Isometries of the Plane, a fancy name to address transformations, rotations, or reflections of a graph.

“Instead of just a test, there is a predetermined topic [selected for the oralist competition]. They give you three problems and you have to [solve them and] present them to the judges,” Duan said. “I think it is more fun because it is more engaging than just taking a test.”

Cognizant of how Duan had to improve over the years since his freshman year to achieve this victory, Math Coach Ankur Joshi is possibly more pleased with Duan’s achievement this weekend than he is himself.

“The most memorable statement Jiedong ever said to me was: “So what is common sense?” He was saying that in reference to the oralist competition. He did not know how far he had to explain his thinking, [assuming important steps in his process towards an answer to be common sense]” Joshi said. “Now, look how far he has come.”

For Duan, time with his fellow math team members proved to be comparably precious to his own personal achievement.

The turnout was decent. Fifteen math team members attended the competition on Saturday, and during their downtime in between competitions, they crafted creative means to keep themselves entertained.

With a pingpong ball in hand, they assembled their own makeshift, pingpong table. Their jackets and backpacks were used to form a net, and together they played heated matches by utilizing their phones as paddles.

All in all, it was a good day for Jiedong Duan.