Two Madison schools rated first place in the math tournament held at Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

The Rainbow Elementary School math team and Discovery Middle School seventh- and eighth-grade team captured top honors. Julie Goldston coaches the teams.

In individual honors, Rainbow students Corey Tolbert earned first place and Aditi Limaye took second. They tied after missing one of 25 questions. Tolbert and Limaye “got all three tiebreaker questions right,” Goldston said. Judges then looked for the missed question nearest the test’s end. Tolbert won the tie.

Rainbow’s Alan Grissom won third place; Joe Shen, fourth; and Tony Tian, sixth. Michael Guthrie, Chrisalyn Junkart and Brett Manis also competed.

Winston Van from Discovery won first place, followed by Tyler Tolbert, second; Anthony Zhu, third; Amelia Goldston, fourth; Jasmine Atassi, eight; and Jake Kim, ninth. Other team members were Ada Van Der Zijp, Nihar Patel and Morgan Thomas.

The pre-algebra test included this problem: Austin’s test questions take up 9 pages each. Gylan’s take up 1/4 page each. If the test can’t exceed 20 pages with 25 questions total, what is the minimum number of problems Gylan will have to write? Answers:  A. 25  B. 24  C. 23  D. 22  E. None of the above

For their ciphering team, each math team chose four students, who individually answered a series of five questions. Each correct answer within the first minute earned five points but lowered to two points in the second minute, Goldston said.

“Ciphering is very stressful, because you (work) in front of an audience,” Goldston said. The team’s ciphering score and four highest individual scores on written tests are totaled for the team score.

Rainbow’s ciphering team included Joe Shen, Aditi Limaye, Tony Tian and Alan Grissom. Discovery’s ciphering members were Winston Van, Anthony Zhu, Jake Kim and Tyler Tolbert.

Rainbow won over sixth-graders in 12 schools. From all divisions, Discovery had the second-high score among 15 schools.

To join the math team, Rainbow students must score in the 94th percentile or higher on SAT math or Star Math. At Discovery, seventh-graders taking pre-algebra and eighth-graders taking algebra are invited.

Oh, the correct answer to the pre-algebra problem is … B. 24.