Taking inspiration from the annual integral calculus competition pioneered by Andy Bernoff in 1981, the Physics and Astronomy Club, IITR conducted Integration Bee from September 3rd to 5th 2022. The three-day event witnessed registrations from 60+ teams, 100+ participants and 300+ questions. The event was spearheaded by Rajnish Kumar Jha and Shivam Singh, assisted by Krish Shah, Ayush Ashray and other members of the Physics and Astronomy Section.

The Prize Ceremony was graced by Prof. Aalok Mishra of Physics Department at Seminar Hall, Physics Department. The winners received medals and cash prize.

The winning teams are:

Winner: MathMania: Pawan Lahoti, Ashish Singh, Rishabh Kumar [3rd year Chemical]

1st Runner Up: Fas-Fas Fourier Transform: Mohit Rajbhar, Uddipt Gupta, Archit Isham [ 3rd year MSM]

2nd Runner Up: Math π-rates: Devanshu, Vasu Aggarwal, Dikshant [2nd year ECE]

WatchOut had the opportunity to pick the brains of the winning teams and the organizers of Integration Bee:

WINNERS: Math Mania

The whole experience was really nerve-racking and exciting. We had lots of fun over the past three days. We will be remembering this for a very long time. It feels so surreal especially since we were the 24th team to qualify and were on the verge of elimination in all the rounds. We played 7 tie-breakers in the semi finals to reach the finals and it feels nice to finally win. We feel so relieved now.

We learned a lot from this competition: assessing skills of your opponents, new techniques of integration, managing the pressure, how to plan strategies for such events and finally to never lose hope even if you are the last team of the qualifiers.

1st RUNNER UP : Fas-Fas Fourier Transform

The last three days were extremely fun. The adrenaline rush was really high. The questions kept us constantly on our toes. We prepared for the competition by solving the problems from MIT’s Integration Column. The quality of questions was really good. We got a mix of easy, hard, and really hard problems. There were some really innovative rounds like the relay and the team rounds. Hats off to the organizers.

Funny story. We actually missed the initial deadline for the registration. We were not able to come up with a name. We finally settled on Fas Fas Fourier Transform. The name doesn’t make any sense. We created it on a whim. We contacted them later and then applied for the competition.

We also came 2nd in every round, qualifiers, eliminators, and even were team number 2.

It feels really great now. It was especially mentally exhausting during the finals and the semis. It is definitely one of the best days of my college.

2nd RUNNER UP : Math π-rates

The whole experience was amazing. We basically participated just to play. We never imagined we would even get into the semi-finals. But then we started clearing one round after another and finally got placed as 2nd runner up. It feels really good.

We didn’t really prepare that much other than revising formulae. There were a few silly mistakes that we made and that could’ve been avoided. All in all, the competition was really good. We were a bit worried when we heard that 3rd years, 4th years and even PhDs would be participating. The confidence came gradually as we progressed to further rounds.

The preparation behind the competition must be specially commended.

From the Organizing Committee

There are very few math related competitions happening on our campus. We knew about MIT Integration Bee, having watched videos of the same. Our main motive was to organize such competitions to bring forward students who were interested in Mathematics. We want to encourage more Mathematics related stuff in our campus in general.

Integration mathematics requires skills and is very challenging. When you get the answers correct, you feel great. We love doing integration. There are very interesting tricks to solve question. We get excited by it. We started preparing for this event from 8^th of August. We were a team of 4. We basically drew a rough sketch of what type of problems will be there. Slowly we built upon them and added rounds and variety in them. Usually the competition has individual participation, but we thought of doing teams, which required us to make more questions. So, we compiled 300+ questions. We thought we wouldn’t have to use all of them, but there were so many tiebreakers we ran through all of them. Sorting questions based on their difficulty was challenging. There were heated discussions, sleepless nights, and what not but in the end, it went pretty well. The whole team put in a lot of effort. Special mention to Ashray, Krish, Agrima, Sisir and Sudarshan. There were a lot of logistics involved, including managing the whole event, managing 100+ participants, booking LHC halls, arranging refreshments and preparing scoresheets. Also, our sincere gratitude to our Secretary Simardeep, Saket Sir, and Janish sir. It wouldn’t have been possible without them. We hope that it continues next year, and it gets better with time

Finally, we will get some sleep. It feels peaceful. A wave of satisfaction.

You can expect more events and competitions like these from PaAC in the coming months.