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Kevin Chen

Students representing their teachers and individual classes line up before the beginning of the competition.

On Nov. 18, SPA’s annual graph matching competition was held in the Huss Auditorium. The event was catered to 9th graders, but sophomores, juniors, and seniors were free to watch. The competition was simple: the teachers would show a graph of position in meters over time in seconds, and the 9th-grade competitors representing a physics teacher and period had to match the data of the graph by walking across the stage. A motion sensor was attached, allowing a graph of the competitor’s movements to be recorded and compared to the original graph. Each competitor gets two trials, and the scores were based on how little differences there were between the competitor’s graph and the original graph, with the lowest score being the final score. This process would be repeated in rounds with unique graphs, and half of the competitors would be eliminated each round until the finals.
Once class meeting announcements were made, the competitors for graph matching were brought up to the stage. Scot Hovan’s competitors included Finn Cairns for Period 1 and Finn Miller-Fimple for Period 2. Karissa Baker’s competitors included Pranav Ganji for Period 3 and Milo Clifton for Period 4. Joe Martin’s competitors included Jacob Colton for Period 5, Ben Lorenz-Meyer for Period 7, and Aarushi Bahadur for Period 8. Another wild card competitor participating in Martin’s group includes Cerena Karmaliani.
“I thought it was everything we wanted it to be, which was a demonstration of how to have fun again and how school can be fun,” 9th-grade physics teacher Joe Martin said. “And it’s sort of a playful thing that I don’t think anyone is too nervous about, and so that people can sort of relax, have fun, and cheer something on.”
After 3 rounds of tough competition and several eliminations, Pranav Ganji was declared the winner of the 2021 graph matching competition.