GAIM Director: Tanya Wu gross

Greetings mathletes and coaches! 

From 2013-2021 I coached the AMC8 and MathCounts teams at my children’s NYC public school, and observed how boys freely spoke out at practices whereas girls held back.  When GAIM started in 2016, it seemed to address the need for a math space for girls where they felt safe to be unsure and to try unfamiliar ideas, and to be collaborative rather than competitive. In GAIM practices, girls were visibly more free and able to take risks, take charge, challenge one another, and own the math.  This was the rare experience that I wanted for every girl who ever lost confidence in her math abilities in school.

My childhood math competitions steered me towards a career in STEM, though I loved music and literature as well (notice our GAIM women aren’t only STEM stars!). I competed successfully on my middle school’s first MathCounts team in 1987-88, and also relished high school math competitions like AHSME and AIME.  These fun math encounters, together with supportive teachers, led me to study electrical engineering in college at Princeton and grad school at Stanford, and work as a digital chip designer.

In 2017 I started teaching at Math-M-Addicts, the NYC math program that sponsors and runs GAIM.  I considered myself a math addict and even an expert, but their math problems were foreign to me at first!  I had to learn it from scratch.  Maybe you feel that too when you first try a GAIM problem.  This math goes beyond a typical US school math curriculum.  But after time spent wrestling with it, your mind works in a different way, and it feels good! And that, along with teamwork, is how GAIM aims to build problem-solving muscle and math confidence.

SPECIAL THANKS:

Our GAIM 2024 problems were conceived by Sergey Levin and Alex Perlin, with assistance from Ruvim Breydo and myself.  Sergey, Alex, and Ruvim are former medalists of the International Math Olympiad.  Their math imaginations run deep, so I’m pleased that they can share it with you through GAIM.  Our online platform is courtesy of Art of Problem Solving, an incredibly rich math community and resource for problem solvers.  GAIM newsletters are designed by Cat Lennon, who combines a keen graphic design eye with an understanding of what it’s like to be a student trying to learn math.

We have a high school GAIM intern - Emily Do! She is a GAIM alumna and MathCounts superstar who helps with Newsletter production and some of the various tasks needed to run GAIM. The creative and math-inclined Will Schremmer (Carnegie Mellon) reorganized our website and made it much more navigable.

Special thanks also to previous GAIM intern Cecily Gross (Princeton) who continues to help write and test competition problems, MMA teacher Tricia Pacelli for problem editing, and GAIM friend Matthias Gross for testing GAIM 2024 Round 2.

Together we aim to bring you a competition built around camaraderie and the myriad pleasures of math!