Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Oaz Nir works at his desk in his bedroom in his Saratoga home. He's a student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino.
Go Figure!
Oaz Nir is one if six American high school students to qualify for a math competiotion in South Korea
By Kara Chalmers
In February, almost half a million students from high schools around the country took a math test. The test was the first step in an international mathematics competition, the final round of which was held in Seoul, South Korea, from July 16 to 25.
Only the six best and brightest American students advanced to Seoul. One of the six was Saratoga's Oaz Nir, 16, a student at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino.
To say Nir is good at math would be an understatement. At 5 years old, he was adding positive and negative numbers, and could combine five-digit numerals in his head, says his mother, Dalia Nir. During his freshman year, he finished all high school math classes. He now takes classes with names like 'multivariable calculus' at Stanford University. He thinks math competitions are fun.
Only 12,000 students advanced to the second round, 239 advanced to the finals and 12 were selected for a month-long math training camp, where six were chosen to go to South Korea. In all the fuss over this summer's competition it would be easy to overlook how good Nir is at other things besides math. It would be easy to pigeonhole him as a math whiz kid, and this seems to worry him.
"I'm interested in other things besides math," he said more than once during interviews.
And in fact, Nir is good at much more. He has received fives--the highest grade--on 13 Advanced Placement tests. He has taken AP tests in subjects that he never took a class in--he just taught himself the material. He took the SAT in the eighth grade and got a 1500. He took it again as a junior and got a 1600--a perfect score.
He's a straight A student with a 4.0 GPA, and he's one of the top debaters on the Monta Vista speech and debate team. Last year, he took extra classes--psychology, statistics, philosophy and ancient history--at De Anza College.
"At my school, I've been sort of running out of classes to take," Nir said.
But there's more. Nir is a good athlete, he's a good pianist, and he's a good person. While he admits he's competitive, he quickly follows with the disclaimer that he would never cheat or harm others to come out on top.
"He's obviously a very intelligent person and his academic record is quite incredible," said Monta Vista's Michael Kanda, who taught Nir's junior year honors English class. "But he's also a very modest person and not ostentatious by any stretch of the imagination. And he lets his work speak for itself."
Math is Nir's first passion. According to his mother, "math and science are his love." He likes math because it makes sense, Nir said.
"It's fun, too," he added.
He does not have a secret, when it comes to math. The subject has just always been easy for him, even when he was a child. He likes all kinds of math. He likes the huge sense of accomplishment he feels when he finishes a tough problem.
"Often, it takes a lot of thought," he said. "And it's a great payoff to work on it for a long time and finally get it right."
The competition in South Korea was scheduled to last two days. Competitors would have four and a half hours each day to finish three problems. According to Nir, some 35 students would receive gold medals in the competition, about 70 more would receive silver ones and about 100 would receive bronze.
"I'd like to get at least a silver," Nir said. "And I think I can do that." Nir was also to compete as a member of the USA team, which traditionally has placed in the top five out of 80 or more teams that compete, Nir said.
Math isn't the only thing Oaz Nir enjoys. Here, he practices classical music on the piano. He's also studying jazz, but says that's harder than classical.
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
The math camp that Nir attended for training earlier this summer was challenging as well. A typical day consisted of four hours of lectures and three hours of practice tests.
The best part of this competition, Nir said, is that he gets to spend 10 days total in South Korea. During that time, he will get to meet about 400 other student competitors. American Mathematics Competitions organized the event, and is based at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. They paid all of Nir's travel expenses both for South Korea and to the math camp, which was held at the University of Nebraska's campus.
According to friend Andrew Dudzik, who says he doesn't know many other people who are as passionate about anything as Nir is about math, Nir is an inspiration. Dudzik met Nir at a math camp at Stanford in the summer of 1999. He said Nir helped him get "really interested in math."
Dudzik was also selected to attend the camp in Nebraska this summer, since he placed high on the math exams to attend the camp. He said this was a big accomplishment for him.
"It wasn't even remotely in reach last year," Dudzik said, adding that he would practice with Nir again this year so that he could make the six-person USA team next year.
Bob VanHoy, the chairman of the math department at Monta Vista, teaches AP Computer Science. Nir took the class when he first enrolled at Monta Vista as a sophomore when the family moved to Saratoga from Mississippi because of his father's job as a nuclear engineer. VanHoy could not name any other students who have performed as well as Nir academically.
"He's a rare person in that his activities and interests are tremendously varied," VanHoy said. "I would say that this is the best that we've had."
Nir brought to VanHoy's attention a nationwide programming contest on the Internet in which students could compete and that Nir specifically wanted to take part. VanHoy said Nir placed in the upper echelon.
Kanda, Nir's English teacher, said that Nir, although he did not struggle in his class, always wanted to do his best and would ask Kanda how to improve. He said Nir is insightful and self-motivated and was one of the best writers in the class.
"A lot of times, people who are very gifted in one area are reluctant to try new things because they are afraid of not being successful," Kanda said.
Not true in Nir's case. Kanda mentioned that every Friday he would survey his class on a teen issue. One week, the topic was dancing.
"I asked the girls in the class how important it is to them that males can dance and that males are willing to dance," he said. "The conclusion was that the females just want males to dance, they don't care how."
One of Kanda's teaching assistants--a senior--and a group of her friends, wanted to try a ballroom dancing class, just for fun. But they needed male partners. Kanda told the boys in his junior English class that if enough of them signed up, he would excuse them from the heavy workload he had planned for the following week. So Oaz signed up, Kanda said, and went dancing with the senior girls.
"He was the only one that was brave enough to go," Kanda said.
Nir's desire to learn is pure. He works hard because he likes to, not to get into the best colleges.
"It's not for college," Nir said of his academic achievements. "I'm sure it'll be nice in terms of getting into college but that's not the reason I do it. I do it for fun or for learning or because I like the challenge. It's not with this goal in mind--to get into college. It's good to think about the future like that, but in general, it's a bad philosophy because you should live in the present, too."
Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
Oaz Nir excels in math, but he's also a musician, a debater, a competitive athlete and more.
Still, Nir will probably have his choice of colleges to attend. He said he might like to go to the East Coast, and he mentioned schools with strong math programs, such as Duke, Harvard and Princeton.
"Although his grades are perfect and he always tries to do his best, his performance stems not from being a perfectionist but from wanting to learn," said mother Dalia Nir. "He does it because he loves it."
According to his mother, Nir is reserved, polite, humble and sensitive. She isn't the only one who thinks so. His teachers say he is a mature, genuinely nice person and "just very likable," in VanHoy's words.
"His smile and his overall demeanor is always positive and truly a pleasure," said VanHoy.
VanHoy, Nir's computer programming teacher, said he witnessed a change in Nir throughout that year.
"He came into an AP class without any background, no previous experience," VanHoy said. "And he was quiet, and somewhat withdrawn but very hardworking. Throughout the year he became one of the best students in the class, with a tremendous amount of curiosity and self-motivated work to bring him to that point." VanHoy said that by the end of the year, Nir began to participate in other things on campus and became much more a part of his class.
Nir, who turns 17 in August, will be the president of the math and science club at Monta Vista next year as a senior. He will continue swimming and playing water polo on the school's varsity teams. He plans to compete on the debate team, which debates one topic throughout the year.
"What I liked about that was you get really close to the topic and get to know it really well," Nir said about the club. "By the end of the year you feel like an expert on the topic."
He is a member of his school's Future Business Leaders of America organization. He also makes time to hang out with his friends and his girlfriend.
Last year, VanHoy worked with Nir on the school's robotics team. Students built a robot and programmed it to perform a set of activities.
"He was one of the six members and probably the most steadying influence of the group," VanHoy said of Nir. "The one that would direct work, and both come up with ideas and pursue them and help others to understand what he was working toward."
Saratoga, California Since 1955
