Nick Lannan's Blog

Question: If you start with $1 and, with each move, you can either double your money or add another $1, what is the smallest number of moves you have to make to get to exactly $200? Mark Sellke, an 8th grader at Klondike Middle School in West Lafayette, Indiana, correctly answered this question in less than 45 seconds this past May to become the 2010 MATHCOUNTS individual champion. Yesterday, President Obama met with Mark, the winning MATHCOUNTS team from California, and the individual runner-up of the competition [...]