DOHA, QATAR: A team from the American School of Doha took the top prize at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar’s (CMU-Q) fourth annual Pi Day Mathematics Competition. Two teams from the DPS Modern Indian School came in second and third, and Qatar Academy rounded out the final four.

CMU-Q introduced the Pi Day Mathematics Competition in 2016 to encourage high school students to explore the fun side of math. This year’s competition was sponsored by Fifty One East, who presented the awards to the winners and finalists.

Daniel Lattouf, Retail Director at Fifty One East, remarked: “Fifty One East would like to encourage the young people of Qatar to embrace mathematics and problem solving. We are pleased to support Carnegie Mellon as they inspire high school students to challenge themselves in the area of math.”

“We were very pleased with how hard the students worked this year,” said Hasan Dermirkoparan, Associate Teaching Professor of Mathematics at CMU-Q, and an organizer of the event. “All of the students, and especially the top four teams, showed their talent and tenacity and I congratulate each one of them.”

The four teams who qualified for the final round scored the highest among 104 teams, representing 65 private, community, and independent schools from across Qatar. The four students on the winning team were: Andrew Awada, Ishwar Karthik, Aditya Kumaran and Mayank Kumaran. The team was mentored by Fernando Perez.

Pi Day is embraced by mathematicians and educators worldwide as an opportunity to celebrate and encourage learning in mathematics. Pi is written in symbol form as the Greek letter π, which represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, an infinite number rounded to 3.14. Pi Day falls on March 14 each year, or 3/14.