Integral Achievement

May 1, 2005 Issue

After two hours of high drama, witnessed by approximately 100 spectators, Pitt undergraduate Pedram Roushan (top right) achieved a three-peat as the University’s Integration Champion, winning the Fifth Annual Pitt Integration Bee April 7. Roushan, a senior double-majoring in mathematics and physics, also won the competition in 2003 and was cochampion in 2004. As this year’s champion, he won $100 in Pitt Book Center gift certificates and the coveted Integration Bee Champ T-shirt. The Integration Bee, sponsored by the University Honors College and organized by Pitt’s mathematics department, is open to all Pitt undergraduates and is run like a spelling bee. During the first two rounds, students attempt to evaluate an integral within a given time limit. (Nicki Zevola, a sophomore majoring in physics/astronomy and chemistry, is pictured bottom right, evaluating an integral during one of the early rounds.) The first two rounds are single elimination—one miss and you’re out—but each student may consult for 20 seconds with a “lifeline” in one of the rounds. At left, Patrick Singleton, a freshman civil engineering major, consults with “lifeline” Bard Ermentrout, a Pitt professor of mathematics. Survivors of the Integration Bee’s first two rounds compete head-to-head during the competition’s lightning rounds to evaluate the same integral and determine who will be champion. On April 17, Pitt’s College in High School Program sponsored the University’s inaugural integration bee for high school students. More information on the Pitt integration bees is available at www.math.pitt.edu/bee.html (undergraduate) and www.math.pitt.edu/beehs.html (high school).