Eighteen schools and approximately 140 students participated in the MATHCOUNTS Massachusetts MetroNorth Chapter competition that took place at Andrews Middle School in Medford on Saturday, February 4.

Newton’s Charles E. Brown Middle School MATHCOUNTS team — team Pi-Thon, consisting of students Zach Gao, Jason Huang, Stephen Wang, and April Mei — placed fifth, allowing the team to advance to the State Competition to be held at UMass-Lowell on March 4. Schools placing ahead of Brown were Clarke and Diamond in Lexington, Buckingham Browne & Nichols, and McCall in Winchester.

Newton’s Oak Hill Middle School placed seventh. Besides these teams, Newton students from F. A. Day Middle School and Newton Country Day School also participated individually in the competition.

MATHCOUNTS is a national mathematics competition that has served millions of middle school students since 1984. It is divided into a series of contests at the school, chapter, state, and national level.  Last year 55,500 students participated in the competition.

Last November at Newton South HS, the Brown team also won the team championship and some individual championships in M Snake –Newton’s first math competition for city-wide middle school students. M Snake is a local math competition for all Newton middle school students, founded by Newton South HS junior Elena Boskakova and run by NSHS students.