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| − | ==A Note From the User== | + | =Explanation of Username and Alcumus= |
| − | 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 ok. Note that i am watching this page to know who's been editing it.
| + | When I was in 5th grade, I won 1st place in my grade in the Bergen County Academies Math Competition (now renamed to Joe Holbrook Math Competition), and one of the prizes was a $40 AoPS gift certificate. Back then, I didn't know what AoPS was, so one day, I came onto this site for the first time and browsed the bookstore. I ended up getting Volume 1. Later, I came back and checked out the other sections of the site. I wasn't interesting in classes. Nor did I pay much attention to the forum. But Alcumus, FTW, and the Videos caught my attention. Eventually, I started using my friend's account in order to use Alcumus and play FTW (I could watch the videos without an account). Most of the time I spent on AoPS back then was on Alcumus. I ended up getting redirected to the forum for solutions to many questions, and started exploring the rest of it. At the same time, my friend was also occasionally using Alcumus, but got many questions wrong, lowering the progress and making it harder for me to level up. I decided that it would be for me to start fresh. There was no reset feature back then, so I created my own account. Hence this name. I posted for the first time on the forums two days later. Alcumus is a very motivational math platform to help encourage math. |
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| − | ==About==
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| − | AlcumusGuy is a 6th grader that lives in New Jersey and is still pending membership into the New Jersey Usergroup. Being excellent at math, he has done well in many competitions, and managed to make it into not only the MathCounts practice sessions after the 1st test, but also the MathCounts competition taking place in February after a whole series of tests. Note that the Computer Programming section is not finished yet.
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| − | ==Competitions==
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| − | ===Bergen County Academies Math Competition (BCAMC)===
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| − | 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 6th place with a score of 35, 5 points away from the first place winner. Nevertheless, he won the game of countdown during the lunch break.
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| − | ===AMC 8===
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| − | This is the first year he took AMC 8, and got a 21. His score qualified for AMC 10 and is currently doing practice problems. He has so far done 1 test and got a score of 105 with 16 correct, 6 unanswered, and 3 incorrect. He is still trying to find a way to convince his mom to let him take AMC 10 this year (if they can find somewhere that offers it) but is out of ideas, except perhaps scoring very good at the practice tests.
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| − | ===CML===
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| − | 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 currently has a perfect score, and is looking forward to Math League, where he scored a 39 on his sample test
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| − | ===MATHCOUTNS===
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| − | 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. Every practice, everyone took a sprint and target round test, and practiced team rounds with reasonable teams and also countdown rounds. Last practice, the coach announced the 10 people (not necessarily the top 10 scorers) that would continue to the February competition (AlcumusGuy thinks that she's skipping the school competition)
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| − | ==Progress in Math==
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| − | AlcumusGuy currently remains the smartest, or knows the most in math in his grade. 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, using yet another textbook from the library along with Khan Academy. He is currently using Khan Academy to begin his study of trigonometry.
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| − | ==How He Came to AoPS==
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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 some time to play FTW and use Alcumus. However, in October (this year), he decided that he wanted an account of his one, so he created one and that's how he came.
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| − | ==Computer Programming==
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| − | 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."
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| − | 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.
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| − | One day, he decided to check out Bucky's youtube channel, and the first video on the list was an update video. He decided to watch it, and it talked about Bucky's tutorial plans, how he planned to finish the C++ tutorials then go into game development with Blender 3D and Ogre 3D.
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Explanation of Username and Alcumus
When I was in 5th grade, I won 1st place in my grade in the Bergen County Academies Math Competition (now renamed to Joe Holbrook Math Competition), and one of the prizes was a $40 AoPS gift certificate. Back then, I didn't know what AoPS was, so one day, I came onto this site for the first time and browsed the bookstore. I ended up getting Volume 1. Later, I came back and checked out the other sections of the site. I wasn't interesting in classes. Nor did I pay much attention to the forum. But Alcumus, FTW, and the Videos caught my attention. Eventually, I started using my friend's account in order to use Alcumus and play FTW (I could watch the videos without an account). Most of the time I spent on AoPS back then was on Alcumus. I ended up getting redirected to the forum for solutions to many questions, and started exploring the rest of it. At the same time, my friend was also occasionally using Alcumus, but got many questions wrong, lowering the progress and making it harder for me to level up. I decided that it would be for me to start fresh. There was no reset feature back then, so I created my own account. Hence this name. I posted for the first time on the forums two days later. Alcumus is a very motivational math platform to help encourage math.
