UCLA Olga Radko Endowed Math Circle

Welcome to ORMC

Winter 2025 Quarter Information

Registration for the Winter 2025 quarter regular ORMC classes will open on Tuesday, 12/3, and close in the morning of Wednesday, 12/18. A necessary condition for a returning student to be re-enrolled is for their parents to respond to the parental support survey emailed to them earlier.   

Returning students should apply to the same classes they attended in the Fall 2024. The majority of the returning students will be registered automatically once they apply, if their parents have responded to the survey. We may reconsider enrollment of a student based on the following factors: little interest in studies, poor behavior, low attendance, and their parents not responding to the parental support survey. 

Registration for the ORMC auxiliary programs, math competitions' training and chess club, will open on Wednesday, 12/18, and close in the morning of Wednesday, 12/25. Registration for the auxiliary programs is only available to students enrolled in the regular classes.

ORMC will be in session on Sundays 1/12, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/9, 2/16, 2/23, 3/2, and 3/9. Please note that this includes the MLKJ and Presidents Day weekends. 

Fall 2024 Quarter Information

The Fall 2024 quarter enrollment in all ORMC classes is now closed.

Attendance policy: if a student misses two or more classes for the reasons we do not consider excused absences, we may dis-enroll the student from the program. We do not consider attending sports and music events, travel, and other activities as excused absences.

  • First day of classes: Sunday, 9/29
  • AMC 10/12 A: Wednesday, 11/6, in WG Young CS 24 at 6:00 PM PST.
  • No classes: Sunday, 11/10 (Veterans Day weekend)
  • AMC 10/12 B: Tuesday, 11/12, in MS 4000 A at 6:00 PM PST.
  • Parents Club meeting: Sunday, 11/17; Winter 2025 math camp at UCLA, a meeting with Dr. Zuming Feng, MS 5200.
  • No classes: Sunday, 12/1 (Thanksgiving weekend)
  • Last day of classes: Sunday, 12/8
  • All classes will be taught in person

Special event

On 12/8, at 1:00 - 3:00 PM, in Young Hall 4222C, we will have a special event, named My Favorite Math Competition Problem, to honor Tiger (Qiao) Zhang winning gold medal at the International Math Olympiad in 2024. Four speakers will each present their favorite math competition problem, including a solution and necessary mathematical background.

  • Nikita Gladkov, graduate student at UCLA Department of Mathematics, IMO silver 2015.
  • Sucharit Sarkar, professor at UCLA Department of Mathematics, head of UCLA Putnam training.
  • Diana Tolu, undergraduate student at UCLA Department of Mathematics, IMO silver 2021.
  • Tiger Zhang, high school student and ORMC volunteer instructor, IMO gold 2024.

The event will be filmed. The recording will be posted on the ORMC YouTube channel. Students of all the levels from Advanced 1 up are strongly encouraged to attend. Parents are welcome subject to the seat availability. 

Guest lecture

On 12/8, at 4:00 - 6:00 PM, in Young Hall 4222C, there will be a guest lecture for ORMC Advanced levels students and instructors by Prof. Georg Menz (UCLA), named How Markets Come Together: Using Thermodynamic Principles to Understand Financial Markets. The lecture will be given at the popular science level.

Abstract: We explore how financial markets combine and influence each other, especially through the role of arbitrage - the process of finding and taking advantage of price differences across markets. We describe how markets share striking similarities to thermodynamic systems. This perspective helps us see how the process of combining markets can lead to a "market entropy," a measure of lost liquidity when markets aggregate quantifying price uncertainty. Finally, we examine how this theory unifies two perspectives of a market: one as an exchange mechanism and the other as a venue for interaction among traders. The talk is aimed at a general audience.

Donations:

Donations form a crucial component of the Circle's budget. Quarterly donations at the level of $300 per student are needed to sustain the high quality of our program.  Please consider ORMC as a part of your giving plans this season! Donations are not a factor in enrollment decisions and do not entitle your child to enrollment.

Fall 2024 Schedule:

 

ClassBeginners 1Beginners 2Intermediate 1Intermediate 2
Time and room #

A: 10:00 - 10:50 AM, MS 6221

B: 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 6221

C: 11:10 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 5117

A: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 6627

B: 1:00 - 3:00 PM, MS 6201

C: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, MS 6201

A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6221

B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 3974

A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6201

B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 6627

Fall 2024 school grade2 - 44 - 65 - 77 - 9

 

ClassAdvanced 1Advanced 2Advanced 3AMC 8AMC 10/12OlympiadsChess Club
Time and room #

A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5117

B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5118

A: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5127

B: 4:00 - 6:00 PM, MS 5137

4:00 - 6:00 PM

MS 6229

1:00 - 3:00 PM

MS 5117

1:00 - 3:00 PM

MS 3974

1:00 - 3:00 PM

MS 6229

1:00 - 3:00 PM

MS 6221

Fall 2024 school grade9 - 1110 -12     

 

About us: an article in UCLA Magazine

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/magazine/olga-radko-endowed-math-circle-gifted-students

Summer 2024 ORMC students and instructors wearing Jane Street t-shirts with a cool math problem: Cut a cake randomly n times. What is the expected number of pieces?

ORMC Math Videos

Satellite Math Circles

ORMC may designate some Math Circles as ORMC satellites. A request for such a designation should be sent to the ORMC director. To qualify, a Math Circle 

1. has to be free-of-charge for participating students; 

2. have a substantial part, 50% or more, of their curriculum based on the ORMC curriculum; 

3. have instructors with ORMC training; and 

4. operate in close contact with ORMC so that ORMC could attest to the quality of the instruction.

  • An ORMC Advanced 1 student, Lawrence Pang, along with his six friends, continues their ORMC Satellite Program at Wittmann Elementary School. The class was moved to an in-person format, doubling the number of students. The students found the curriculum and Math Circle methods to be vastly more fun and engaging, especially with the in-person format and interpersonal interaction that comes with it. Lawrence and his team plan to continue in-person classes to expand their community impact and help everyone interested get the Math Circle experience.
  • This is the third year that Leonardo (Leo) Lam, currently an Advanced 1 student at ORMC, and his team of assistant instructors are running an ORMC satellite program in the Upland Unified School District. The program began with a Circle at a local high school teaching the ORMC curriculum to math-inclined students from three elementary schools in the district. Leo and his team were the first to start a Math Circle in the Inland Empire region of CA. In year two, the Circle grew to include students from five out of ten elementary schools in the district. Recently, Leo established a second ORMC satellite at a local elementary school in partnership with the school's Saturday absence recovery program. Leo also improved the quality of instruction by recruiting and training his high school peers. In year three, student participation has reached nine out of ten elementary schools. Moving forward, Leo's goal is to further expand the satellite program, providing more support to the district's initiative in absence recovery.

Thank you notes

  • ORMC would like to thank the Circle's major donor, Ms. Sierra Chen, for her unwavering support.
  • Ms. Lily Hsu has pledged to donate 45K to the Circle over the course of five years. Thank you, Lily!
  • The Circle would like to thank Mr. Richard Rasiej for covering the cost of our AI-powered chat-bot project. We hope that after some training, the bot would be able to respond to the majority of the incoming ORMC emails.
  • ORMC would like to thank Jane Street for their 10K donation.
  • ORMC would like to thank Prof. Sucharit Sarkar for supporting the Circle through his NSF RTG grant.
  • The Circle would like to thank the Schlessinger family for providing food and beverages for the beginning and end of the year parties for ORMC instructors for three years in a row.
  • The Circle would like to thank all the parents helping with fundraising.
[Edit]

Recent News

ORMC instructor makes a breakthrough in combinatorics

An ORMC instructor, Nikita Gladkov, with co-authors, has found a highly non-trivial counter-example to an important hypothesis in combinatorics, called the bunk-bed conjecture. The work has generated so much interest in the mathematical community that they made a video about the breakthrough even before the paper was published in a peer-reviewed magazine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDU-oTiHnCs&t=148s

Hats off to Nikita!

Two ORMC Students won gold on India International Math Competition

ORMC students, Atticus Stewart and Daniel Sun, won gold at InIMC Summer 2024 individual competitions, Keystage 3 and Keystage 2 (for younger students) respectively. Hats off to Atticus and Daniel!

https://chiuchang.org/imc/en/2024/08/13/inimc-2024-results/

Team USA won the first place at the IMO 2024 in Bath, the UK

A former ORMC student and current volunteer instructor, Tiger (Qiao) Zhang, was on the US team and won a gold medal. Hats off to Tiger!

http://imo-official.org/year_individual_r.aspx?year=2024&column=total&order=desc

College admissions 2024

  • Sarah Brown will be majoring in engineering at UC Berkeley.
  • Natalie Epshtein will be majoring in biochemistry at UCLA.
  • Jack Fasching will major in applied math at UCLA.
  • Hyunwoo Lee will be majoring in mechanical engineering at Columbia University.
  • Benjamin Ostrovsky will be studying math and CS at Caltech.
  • Vigyan Sahai is joining a special program called the College of Creative Studies (CCS) at UCSB in Computing as a Regents Scholar. This is a research/PhD-focused undergraduate program. Approximately 10 students join the Computing major each year. The students are assigned faculty mentors and begin research in their first year.
  • Benjamin Telanoff will be majoring in Data Science at UC Berkeley.

ORMC instructor accepts a Hans Rademacher Instructor postdoctoral position at UPenn.

Congratulations to Aaron Anderson!

ORMC Beginners 1 students' placing at 2024 AMC 8

Charlotte Huang, currently in the 3rd grade, got an Honors Roll with Distinction (top 1% nationwide). Srivibhav Mandapaka, currently in the 4th grade, got an Honors Roll (top 5% nationwide). Way to go!

ORMC students qualify for AIME

Over 30 ORMC students have qualified for AIME on AMC 10/12 in the Fall 2023.

A former ORMC instructor featured in the Quanta magazine

Alexandru Pascadi, a lead instructor of the ORMC Olympiads class in 2019-21, currently a grad student at Oxford, was featured in the Quanta magazine:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-generation-of-mathematicians-pushes-prime-number-barriers-20231026/?mc_cid=9ae6d18810

Caroline D. Bradley scholarship

Two ORMC students, Atticus Stewart and Elili Flore, were awarded the Caroline D. Bradley scholarship in the Fall 2023. The honor includes a four-year tuition, upwards of $200K per scholar, to the high school or high school program of their choosing that can meet their gifted intellectual needs.

An ORMC student named as one of the top 40 young scientists in the nation by Regeneron Science Talent Search

Regeneron Science Talent Search, formerly Intel Science Fair, formerly Westinghouse Science Fair, is possibly the oldest and most prestigious national science competition for high school students in the US. An ORMC student, August Deer, was named as one of the scholars in 2023. Hats off to August! 

https://www.societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts/2023-student-finalists/august-deer/

The Circle is grateful to Prof. Salman Avestimehr (USC) for giving August a chance to do research in his lab. 

[Edit]