BOSTON, May 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Kevin Liu, a
14-year-old eighth grader from Carmel
Middle School in Carmel,
Indiana, has earned the title of 2015 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS®
National Champion after an intense, elite competition at the
Sheraton Boston Hotel. This is the seventh year Raytheon (NYSE:
RTN) has served as the event's title sponsor, as part of a
decade-long commitment to MATHCOUNTS and a larger effort to promote
education in science, technology, engineering and math.
Liu won the final round of the 2015 Raytheon MATHCOUNTS National
Competition by answering the question: "How many arithmetic
progressions of six increasing terms include the terms 15 and 20?"
He gave the correct answer, 15, in 17.9 seconds. As National
Champion, Liu is the recipient of the $20,000 Donald G. Weinert College Scholarship and
a trip to U.S. Space Camp.
Liu – last year's runner-up – was the seventh-ranked competitor
in the Countdown Round, during which the 12 Mathletes® with the
highest written test scores competed in head-to-head matchups for
the title of 2015 National Champion. Eighth grader Andy Xu, 12, of the Sterling School in
Simpsonville, South Carolina, was
the Countdown Round Runner-Up. The semifinalists included eighth
grader Frank Han, 14, from Central
Middle School in Eden Prairie,
Minnesota; and eighth grader Freddie
Zhao, 13, of Boulan Park Middle
School in Troy,
Michigan.
In the team competition, Indiana captured the title of First Place
Team. Team members include Alex Gu
of the Sycamore School in Carmel;
Joey Heerens of Carmel Middle School in Carmel; Nathan
Hu of West Lafayette Junior High School in West Lafayette, and Liu, the National
Champion. The Maryland state team
took second place, and the Massachusetts team placed third.
"This is a competition, but more importantly it is a celebration
of middle-school students who love math and work hard at it," said
Thomas A. Kennedy, Raytheon Chairman
and CEO. "They're all winners – they won the first time they showed
an interest in math."
Liu was among 224 competitors from 50 states, U.S. territories
and schools that serve the state and defense departments, who
traveled to Boston after earning a
spot in the national competition. More than 100,000 students
nationwide participated in the local and state competitions that
led to this weekend's event – the first Raytheon MATHCOUNTS
National Competition held in Boston. This year's competition was the
32nd in MATHCOUNTS' history.
"We really need people who have that passion for math and for
STEM activities, and these students display that," said MATHCOUNTS
Executive Director Lou DiGioia.
"They spend hours every week going to math practices. They've made
a commitment to the subject and they want to be the best that they
can. And that's amazing. That's why we celebrate them."
About Raytheon
Raytheon Company, with 2014 sales
of $23 billion and 61,000 employees worldwide, is a
technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, security
and civil markets throughout the world. With a history of
innovation spanning 93 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art
electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in
the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications
and intelligence systems, as well as cyber security and a broad
range of mission support services. Raytheon is headquartered
in Waltham, Mass. For more about Raytheon, visit us
at www.raytheon.com and follow us on
Twitter @raytheon.
About MATHCOUNTS Foundation
MATHCOUNTS is a nonprofit
organization that strives to engage middle school students of all
ability and interest levels in fun, challenging math programs, in
order to expand their academic and professional opportunities.
Middle school students exist at a critical juncture in which their
love for mathematics must be nurtured, or their fear of mathematics
must be overcome. For more than 30 years MATHCOUNTS has provided
free, high-quality resources to educators and enriching,
extracurricular opportunities to students to lay a foundation for
future success. Materials and information are available at
www.mathcounts.org.
Media Contact
Raytheon Company
Allison
Jeannotte
+1.781.522.5145
corporatepr@raytheon.com
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SOURCE Raytheon Company