This document contains an interview transcript where the interviewee discusses attending a math competition called SEAMC from February 26 to March 1, 2009. They chose to attend after overhearing their teacher mention it, seeing it as a rare opportunity. During the competition, they stepped up to lead their team in a math scavenger hunt, finding a new side of themselves. They were also motivated by the creative math problems, gaining a new perception of how math applies to everyday objects. The interviewee reflects that this experience showed their balance of emotion and reason, but also their limited use of language as a way of knowing.

1. Geun Ho Lee
Senior Seminar P.4
Interview script: SEAMC Feb 26 – Mar 1 2009
A short introduction of myself
Q. What have you learned in this class?
A. The main skill I developed through this course is critical thinking. With critical thinking I
can now determine different factors that attribute to a knowledge. Also, I now know the
four ways of knowing, different areas of knowledge, and have a general idea of what
ethics means in epistemology.
Q. What example did you choose and why did you choose it?
A. I chose the math competition I attended in my freshman year for 4 days between February
26 and March 1, 2009 at BPS (Bangkok Pattana School). I chose this example, because
not only did I learn about a new side of me but also encountered new situations and
experienced new things about math that I was never introduced to. Therefore, since then, I
have learned to appreciate the logic behind mathematics.
Q. How did you get to know this competition and why did you attend it?
A. I was in my math class, packing up to leave. For some reason that I cannot remember,
everyone else have left the class and me and one other student was in the room. My
teacher asked to the other student in the room about this competition, which I could not
resist to overhear. Maybe it was a pure luck that I was still in the room and overheard
about this competition, because if it were not that, I would have missed out on this event.
My teacher noticed that I was qualified for this competition and asked if I was interested.
Right at that moment, I intuitively knew that such chances are very rare and immediately
decided to attend the competition. So, I relied on my emotion and reason to base my
decision; through inductive reasoning, I inferred that these free admissions to contests are
very rare and are special privileges, and then my sense of urgency and gratitude took over
to come to the decision to attend SEAMC.
Q. What exactly is this competition?
A. SEAMC stands for Southeast Asia Math Contest. As it can be predicted from the name,
SEAMC is a math contest in which a number of schools, often between 50 to 70 schools,
attend in their students to compete in it. Usually, the participant number hovers 270
students. Although this sounds like an intense competition, it actually is a fun contest.
Students get to interact with other students from different schools and are challenged with
interesting math problems that are not seen in our classrooms. Creative thinking and
mathematical concepts are well blended in all of the challenges in this competition.
Q. What was one of the events in this competition that affected your experience?
A. On the third day of the contest, students were split into groups and were assigned to do a
math scavenger hunt in a national park in Pattanakan. This park was huge and I and my
group members were challenged with mathematical problems and stamina. During this
activity, I found a different personality in myself. I was always the quiet one and the

2. Geun Ho Lee
Senior Seminar P.4
follower. However, I stepped up to lead my team and motivate the team to really hunt
through the problems.
Q. What ways of knowing relate to this?
A. The ways of knowing that could be related to this event are emotion, perception, and
reason.
Q. Explain how these WoK relate to this event.
A. Well, since the beginning day of the contest, I wanted to win the competition. So the desire
to do the best and perhaps to win this activity in the contest took over my emotional senses
and shut down my usual personality of a follower. This can be explained with the James-
Lange theory, which states that our emotions and bodily actions are inseparable. This is
because the fear that I would have no chance in winning the competition came with the
inseparable action of me taking forth the role of a leader to lead the team to the successful
road.
Moreover, I perceived from the fidgeting gestures and awkward postures of my team
members that none of us were much of the outgoing people. This relates to the theory of
coherence, as I have a firm picture in my mental map that people fidget around and make
awkward postures when they are introverted or feeling shy.
So I used both inductive and deductive reasoning to reason out to find out the solution to
the situation. I went through a series of syllogisms. In the first step, I came to the
conclusion that the team needs to win from two premises which were I want to win the
competition and the particular event is a team event. In the second step, I came to the
conclusion that team needs a leader to win the event from two premises which were all
successful teams have leaders and my team needs to be successful to win the event. In the
last step, I came to the conclusion that I need to step up to be a leader from two premises
which were team members are followers and I have act out to fulfill my desire to win the
competition.
Q. Do you have any other incidents in the contest that have affected your experience?
A. The questions that were given in the contest were very interesting because I have never
seen these types before. The math questions were no longer the boring ones that I were
almost to the point of being sick of seeing in the classroom, but were the very opposite.
These math questions were creative and were applications in the real world that I
otherwise would not have noticed. These questions motivated me to gain interest in math.
Q. What ways of knowing relate to this?
A. The ways of knowing that could be related to this event are perception and emotion.
Q. Explain how these WoK relate to this event.
A. Seeing these different kinds of math problems, I gained a different perception of
mathematics. Before I attended the contest, I did not see how math was applied in

3. Geun Ho Lee
Senior Seminar P.4
manufacturing the everyday objects around me. But, after seeing and experiencing
problems dealing with math problems that focus on mundane objects and finding the
mathematical theories or aspects in them, my views changed. Every now and then when I
stare at everyday objects around me, I will try to figure out how the object was formed and
relationship to other objects.
Also, I have changed the feelings I had towards math problems after attending this contest.
After seeing and solving creative problems, I gained interest in math. This relates to the
theory of rationalizations, as I have been rationalizing that the math problems I have been
getting are repetition of same concepts and therefore are not interesting. However,
SEAMC triggered actions that would arouse my interest for math problems. This relates to
James-Lange theory, which states that actions and emotions are inseparable, because the
emotional connection of interest for math problems were triggered from the actions I took
in solving them. Also, according to Yerkes-Dodson curve, a person’s performance and
arousal have a bell-curve relationship. In this example, I was lowly aroused and therefore
had weaker performance, but after the experience, my arousal, which is the degree of
interest I feel, rose to medium, which improved my performance level to strong.
Q: What does the example say about you personally or as a student? What do you know
about yourself as a student that will change how you approach learning in the future?
A. This example shows my balance between my reason and emotion. At times, I depend on
emotion and at other times, on reason to base my decisions and understandings of the
world. So, these two ways of knowing are not much of a serious impediment to my
decision making and comprehension. Moreover, I base my perception to perceive the
situations in the world and analyze it with other ways of knowing, emotion and reason.
This is an indication that perception is also not much of a serious impediment to my
learning.
However, this example shows that I do not make use of my language as a way of knowing
too much. As seen in this example, the only instance I used language to perceive or get my
ideas through to others is using mathematical symbols that are universal. One good thing
about math I find is the comparatively small problems caused by translation. But, I see my
low dependence on language to be problematic because language is very important way of
knowing, especially in cases such as analyzing statements made by politicians, because
they use vague language to both confuse us and make an escape route for themselves. So,
in this sense, I think my usage of language as a way of knowing limits my learning.
Conclusion