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The Archdiocese of Los Angeles (a division of the Catholic church) conducts an annual event for middle school children (ages 11 through 14) called the Academic Decathlon. This year, the event brought ten students from each of seventy-one schools to Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles, for a day of competition. In the morning, a logic test is given. Each school works as a team to answer all the questions as well as they can. Then eight different individual tests are given to eight students from each school in the subjects of Religion, English, Literature, Math, Science, Social Studies, Current Events and Fine Arts. After lunch is the Super Quiz, in which all the schools answer multiple choice questions on a variety of specialized subjects. Each question is read, and then about 20 seconds is allotted for the team members to confer on the anwer. Then the moderator says "Answers please," and the team captains hold up a card -- a letter, A through E -- representing the team's answer. A running score is kept for each team, making it very exciting for the spectators if their school is close to the lead. This year, the subjects were the Geography of the Middle East, The Single Shard by Linda Sue Park, The life and paintings of Mary Cassatt, Ecology, and the Book of Genesis.
This web page will focus on the first part of the Decathlon -- the Logic Quiz. While the teams are working on the quiz, the parents are given copies of the same quiz, partly to entertain the parents, and partly to demonstrate just how hard these problems are (so they should be proud of their kids for answering just a few of them). As it turns out, our school, Sacred Heart, in Lancaster, California, beat all the other schools in the Logic Quiz, so I'm very proud of these students.
Sacred Heart School won first place in the 2004 Academic Decathlon (Los Angeles Archdiocese), and then we went on to the State Competition.
Contents Academic Decathlon 2004 Logic Quiz:
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ajhd.org - Academic Junior High Decathlon organization website
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The webmaster and author of this Math Help site is Graeme McRae.