The results of the 50th annual American High School Mathematics Examination (AHSME), administered on Tuesday, February 9, 1999, have been announced. Students in grades 12 and below are eligible to participate. In North Carolina, 153 schools and more than 8,000 students participated in the competition.

In order to generate extra enthusiasm for the 50^th anniversary of the AHSME, the American Math Competitions solicited from Texas Instruments two TI-89 calculators to be given out by a random drawing in each state, one to a school that participated in 1998 and one to a school that did not participate the previous year. The winners in these two categories are North Forsyth in Winston Salem and Sunset Park Christian in Monroe. Congratulations to these two schools.

Special congratulations to the five North Carolina students who qualified for the United States Mathematical Olympiad on April 27. They are David Mermin of Chapel Hill HS; Jim Sukha of NCSSM, Durham; Alex Hall of Charles E Jordan, Durham; Anders Kaseorg, Charlotte Home Educators Association, and Daniel Wong of NCSSM. Flash: David Mermin has been invited to the Math Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP) in Lincoln, NE.

Congratulations to James Rudzinski, of Southwestern Randolph High, the UNC Charlotte AHSME scholar for 1999-2000. James will receive full tuition (and a little more) at UNC Charlotte for four years.

We are excited about the new AMCà 10 exam, which begins in February 2000 for students in grades up to 10. Check our NC AHSME web page: http://www.math.uncc.edu/~hbreiter/

for several a complete set of results, and papers discussing the history and future of the American Math Competitions. We take this opportunity to thank Duke Energy, Carolina Power & Light, and The Public Service Company of North Carolina for making possible the lovely reception for top middle and high school mathematics students with the State Board of Education and the state superintendent in November, 1998. For a copy of the program for that event, visit http://www.math.uncc.edu/~hbreiter/AHSME/program.html.