It was a dark and stormy night, with howling winds and swirling snowflakes, but inside the Masonic Temple, the atmosphere was heated. Twenty seven Pitt undergraduates converged to compete in the Second Annual Pitt Integration Bee, angling for the title of 2002 Integration Champ. They were cheered on by over one hundred of their friends, TAs, and professors.

The competition, held on March 21st, started off with two elimination rounds, in which participants came forward, one by one, to evaluate an integral within a time limit. If a student was stuck, he or she had the opportunity to call up a Lifeline in either of the rounds for a 20 second consultation. These rounds were followed by two Lightning rounds, in which all participants raced head-to-head to evaluate the same integral.

In the end, sophomore engineering major Asha Kamat beat out her rivals to assume the title of Integration Champ. As such, Asha received $75 in University Book Center certificates, courtesy of the Honors College, as well as the coveted (and unique) 2002 Integration Bee Champ T-shirt. Asha outdueled twelve other competitors in the Lightning Rounds. In the first Lightning Round, all produced answers, but only six were correct. The survivors went on to the second Lightning Round, where only Asha solved the integral posed, rushing forward with the answer just before time expired. The other five students in the final round - Jasun Gong, Jason Hadorn, David Haefele, Leslie Kurtz, and Dimitry Ushakov - each won a $25 University Book Center certificate.

This event promises to become a fixture on the Pitt mathematics calendar. Audience members had a festive time cheering for their friends, watching the action on the Prof-Cam display, trying to evaluate the integrals themselves, and enjoying the wide variety of refreshments and door prizes. Several mathematics majors in the audience expressed regret that they had not entered, after seeing that, as advertised, none of the integrals in the competition required knowledge beyond Calculus II, so we look forward to their participation next year. Any Pitt undergraduate can enter, so keep your eyes open for announcements at the start of 2003. And meanwhile, keep solving those integrals!