User:AlcumusGuy

A Note From the User

Everything here is written in third person view. If someone somehow knows me, thinks I forgot something, or wants to add something for some reason, I would prefer that you pm me(this is my page, after all), but if you didn't read this, you were lazy, forgot, or didn't for any reason, that's okay. If you find a typo (like knittingfrenzy18 did), feel free to correct it without my consent. Note that i am watching this page to know who's been editing it.

About

AlcumusGuy is a 7th grader that lives in New Jersey. Being excellent at math, he has done well in many competitions.

Competitions

Bergen County Academies Math Competition (BCAMC)

He first tried out in 4th grade. Unfortunately, that was in 2009, the exceptionally hard year, and did terrible (a score less than 30). The next year in 2010, he took the 5th grade test and got 1st place with a score of 45. In 2011, he took the 6th grade test and got 2nd place with a score of 35, 5 points away from the first place winner (the name will not be stated for obvious reasons, but this person will appear again quite often. we will simply refer to him as AlcumusGuy's rival, even though "the person" has no clue who AlcumusGuy even is, not even in real life). Nevertheless, he won the game of countdown during the lunch break. He hopes to reclaim his 1st place position again in 2012 and beat his rival.

AMC 8

In 2011 (to 2012 school year), he took the AMC8 and got a 21. He may or may not take it again in the 2012 (to 2013 school year), since his mom feels that it's useless.

AMC 10

2012

He had been doing a lot of AMC 10 practice problems. Unfortunatly, he didn't do enough recent ones, as he did a lot of old ones, so he didn't know the expected level of the AMC 10. When he did the old tests, he'd range from 105 to 136. On the 2012 AMC 10A, he wasn't prepared for the level, and it turned out that he only got a 94.5. However, on the AMC 10B, he was prepared, and he got a 123, enough to qualify for AIME! His rival (see the BCAMC sectoin) got somewhere in the 120's on both the 10A and 10B.

2013

He has been doing many AMC 10's now, and his score tends to be in the 130's. He hopes to get at least a 133.5 (from 2 incorrect answers and 1 unanswered) or 135 (1 incorrect answer and 2 unanswered). If he scores a 144 or 145.5 on the 10A, he is very likely to try his luck at the 12B. If he scores a 138 or 139.5 on the 10A, he may try 12B. If he scores 133.5 or 135 on the 10A, he probably won't try 12B, but there's still a chance he may. If he scores lower than that, he definitely won't try to take the 12B.

2012

He found the 2012 AIME a little easier than he expected. He was able to fully solve 5 questions and partially solve 2, while reasonably guessing answers for the rest. Luckily, he got one of the the partially solved ones right while getting #1 (a fully solved one) wrong, so his final score was a 5. That makes his 2012 index a 173, probably not enough to qualify for JMO. He is still a little grumpy about getting #1 wrong.

2013

After doing a year of AMC10's, he does that year's AIME. He tends to be able to solve around 10 of the problems, but only gets 6 of them correct. As of now, his AMC index tends to be in the 190's, which will not be enough to qualify for JMO.

CML

In 3rd grade, he got 1st place for his school (he does not remember his score). The same happened in 4th grade with a score of 28. In 5th grade, after bombing the first test with a 3, he lost his confidence and the next test scores were as follows: 6 (that one was exceptionally easy), 4, 6, 4. This year in 6th grade, he got a perfect score.

Math League

Since he failed to read problem 2 correctly, he got a 34. He is very disappointed, as someone else in his school of the grade did better and got a 35.

MATHCOUNTS

His entire school district, which composes of 2 middle schools, is coached by 1 coach: the coach who went to nationals for 2009, 2010, and 2011. As stated above, we first had a entrance test composed of 20 problems in 25 minutes. The cutoff was 10 correct problems. He and his friend were the only 6th graders to get into the practice section this year. However, his friend was not invited to continue to the competitions, while he was. He got 9th place at the chapter competition (he thinks he got a 44) and 9th place at the state competition as well (his parents were too lazy to stick around and find out his score; they wanted to leave and avoid the leaving traffic jam). He is disappointed that he didn't do better, but there's still 2 years for improvement.

Progress in Math

AlcumusGuy currently remains the smartest, or knows the most math in his grade (for his school). He has been doing math since kindergarten, and started his self-teaching of algebra with a textbook from the public library in 5th grade. Now, he is almost through with Algebra 2 (just need to finish conic sections), using yet another textbook from the library along with Khan Academy. He is currently using Khan Academy for his basic study of trigonometry and precalculus.

Luckily, he started going to BCA Math Team in the spring of 2012, and they have a huge library of math books. Half of it is textbooks, and half of those are AoPS textbooks. The rest are math problems from various contests. He has striped straight through Introduction to Algebra, and is taking time this summer to read Intermediate Algebra.

How He Came to AoPS

After getting 1st place for BCAMC in 5th grade, one of his awards was a $40 gift certificate to use on an AoPS book or class. He and his parents didn't know how well the class would be, so they bought a book. He had a big debate with himself whether to get Introduction to Geometry, Introduction to Counting and Probability, or The Art of Problem Solving Volume 1. He ended up buying Volume 1 for certain reasons that will not be explained in this section because this is not the proper section to do so.

In order to buy the book, he of course had to go to artofproblemsolving.com. After buying the book, he experimented with other features. However, most of them required an account. Suddenly, he remembered his friend (not the one mentioned above) mentioning he had an account here. He shared that account for quite some time in order to play FTW and use Alcumus. However, in October 2011, he decided that he wanted an account of his own, so he created one and that's how he came to be here.

Hobbies

Writing a Book

AlcumusGuy has always wanted to teach, but not become a teacher as his job. He doesn't want to spend his career as a teacher at school because he would have to teach the same thing over and over again, along with having to attend boring meetings on how to improve teaching styles. However, he has enjoyed helping people with their problems here and there. Unable and not knowing how to find people that may want him to tutor, he has decided to write a book to release the information he knows. He is currently using TeXnicCenter to write a book on Algebra 1 in his style.

Computer Programming

After playing computer games for a while, he decided that he wanted to create his own. After trying out many programs and having no idea how to work them, he decided to start smaller with a programming language. He searched up "programming languages for beginners" and one of the results was Python. He downloaded Python, but had no idea how to write scripts or anything. He tried read through a online book, which wasn't much use since he accessed the shell through command line. Then, another one of his friends told him about "a guy from youtube". His friend was learning Objective-C from "the guy" so that he could make I-Phone apps. His friend said "I just searched up Objective-C Tutorials on youtube and a load of results from the same channel came."

So that day, he went home and tried that to. He first searched up Objective-C tutorials to figure out who was "the guy" his friend was talking about. It turned out that he was Bucky Roberts and owned a youtube channel called thenewboston. He then searched up Python Programming Tutorials, and bam! A whole list of tutorials from thenewboston came out. The tutorials taught him how to access the shell through IDLE, and all the technical stuff about Python.

So far, he has learned Python, HTML, CSS, and is still learning C++ and Java. He is planning to make a game with either C++ or Java, depending on the available libraries.

Help Wanted

He currently needs people to help with the game. If anyone is interested, please PM AlcumusGuy to learn more. He currently needs people to make 3d objects either with Blender of 3DsMax, programmers in C++ or Java, and people to make music with whatever program they wish (preferably one that is open-source and doesn't require referencing). Also, if anyone knows any good open-source game engines, physics engines, or anything that may help, please PM him.