Kootenai Kids: Seventh-grader’s talent lies in the numbers
For Nick Induni, it makes perfect sense to spend time after school practicing math problems. If he had Michael Jordan’s gifts, he might be better off using that time to shoot hoops, but that’s not his talent, he believes. He’s a typical 13-year-old who likes video games, swimming and water-skiing on Hayden Lake, and he just happens to be extraordinarily good at math.
Staying true to his natural abilities has earned Nick a collection of trophies from the regional and national MATHCOUNTS competition.
“With math, you use it in everything,” he said. “It’s one of the things I’m best at.”
Nick placed second in this year’s regional meet and took seventh place out of more than 100 competitors at the state event in Boise on March 10. His Canfield Middle School team took third place in the state after coming in first in the region.
Nick was a newcomer to Idaho last year after his family moved from the Portland area. He’d never heard of MATHCOUNTS, a national competition for students in sixth through eighth grade. As a seventh-grader last year, Nick placed fourth individually in the region and fifth in the state.
“I didn’t think I’d do quite that good,” he said.
The challenge of a difficult word problem is pure fun for Nick and that attitude keeps him relaxed during the on-the-spot MATHCOUNTS “countdown” rounds. The top 10 contenders for the individual competition have 45 seconds to hit the buzzer with a solution. The first to answer correctly gains the points. Nick considers the sprint and target rounds to be his strengths, where students are given a set amount of time to complete a number of math problems. Calculators or paper are allowed to solve problems, but the fastest students will compute much of the math in their heads.
Nick and his winning team have practiced their math skills and speed after school twice a week since October with the help of their coach and math teacher Teena Roberts.
“Nick is an outstanding student,” Roberts said. “He’s respectful, nice and outgoing. I just think he’s gifted. He definitely knows his calculator. He’s very technologically advanced.”
Roberts believes that Nick’s strong reading skills help him succeed in solving the complex word problems that are part of the MATHCOUNTS event. He takes high school level geometry and had been in advanced math classes for several years.
Roberts finds that Nick and the rest of her winning team are well-rounded students with plenty of other talents and interests, besides math. Nick loves to read and has acted in Lake City Playhouse and school productions. He’s shown aptitude in handling lights and sound systems and has been hired to help with Playhouse events. He is a straight-A student and plays piano for the school jazz band.
Nick imagines his future will be in technology or computers, where he’ll use the skills he’s practiced in MATHCOUNTS competitions. It’s not all about formulas and numbers. Most of the problems have required him to “think outside the box,” he said. To sample a MATHCOUNTS problem of the week visit www.mathcounts.org.