Hu and Shen are working to remove the stigma around mathematics and help children understand that it can, in fact, be interactive and just plain fun. (Photo provided)
By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
Now that everyone has mini-supercomputers that pretend to be phones in their pockets, it can be challenging to get young people to learn problem-solving skills that do not involve googling, “How do I…?”
Shen
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Carmel High School seniors Jennifer Hu and Allison Shen co-founded Infinity Squared Mathematics, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to bridging the equity gap in math through competitive problem-solving opportunities.
When they were high school freshmen, in 2022, Hu and Shen wanted other young people in their community to see the beauty and significance of mathematics that they could see. As 2025 comes to a close, they have raised over $6,000, gathered a list of sponsors and partners, and helped over 500 students through chapters in Indiana, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Brazil, Mexico, Rwanda, and Uzbekistan.
They are currently gearing up for the Infinity Squared 2025 Winter Math Competition on Dec. 20.
“Originally we wanted to just start an organization where we could help expand math outreach or just teach younger students the concepts of competition math because, growing up, we were always doing math competitions,” Hu said. “We were always competing in them, and we always found them super fun. We wanted to just share our love for math to other students and younger students.”
Now that they have helped teach over 500 other math students, they have also learned a bit about teamwork.
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“I feel like it’s really a lot of experience, but also working together with our strong team of other high schoolers, who are all just very passionate for mathematics,” Shen said. “That is what we hope to promote for everyone. Having that team and also knowing that so many students can actually be impacted and motivated to learn more about mathematics, especially since we know there’s a lot of that social stigma around [the idea that] mathematics is just memorizing formulas and that it’s a really hard subject. But we really want to show that there’s a lot more to mathematics that can come from it being fun, interactive, and promoting teamwork and problem-solving at a higher level.”
They try to instill the love of mathematics by making it concrete, rather than abstract.
“Since we want to kind of teach younger students things that they can’t really learn in school,” Hu said. “We want to teach them applications of math and how they can really use their problem-solving skills and develop more problem-solving skills. That is most easily done through math competitions and teaching them those concepts. That’s how we used to like to build our own math competition and problem-solving skill sets.”
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In the past few years, Infinity Squared has hosted Meet the Math events at the Zionsville Public Library and Carmel Clay Public Library. According to both Hu and Shen, the event is what its name implies: students get to “Meet the Math” through interactive lectures and problems.
“We love to give real world applications that aren’t just limited to things like finances,” Shen said. “We often use concepts like nature or problem solving in your daily life. If you’re like splitting a pie or you’re splitting a cake, it’s a round object. Most people often think like, oh, we can just cut it down the middle. But there’s more ways than that.”
Hu agreed that problems based in tangible reality help turn abstract ideas into useful skills.
“I’ve seen a lot of interesting problems that really allow me to think more and use different applications from the math concepts I learned both through high school and outside of school,” Hu said. “I try to bring all these concepts together and try to delve into higher-level math like that.”
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Online registration is open for the 2025 Winter Math Competition on Dec. 20 at tinyurl.com/infinitysquaredcomp.
Next spring, their Meet the Math event will be held at the Westfield Public Library.
If you’d like to help by becoming a donor or a sponsor, you can email Hu and Shen at infinitysquaredmathematics@gmail.com.
More details can be found at infinitysquaredmathematics.org. You can also check out the “Problem of the Week” link at the top of the page and test your own math application skills.
