Lehi teen recognized for new mathematical approach

Lehi teen recognized for new mathematical approach

(Sarah Brown)


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LEHI — For Brock Brown, everything is related. That perspective informed his mind when he created an alternative approach to the binomial theorem as a sophomore.

The now 17-year-old Lehi High School Student came up with the approach during a winter pre-calculus class in 10th grade. His teacher, Sharon Gourley, was teaching the class about binomial expansions. As he sat in class, she saw him start working something else out in front of him.

“He does this a lot. I’ll look at him and I know he’s totally just in his own little world. You can almost hear clicking in his brain. He’s off thinking about something else and I don’t really worry about him when he does this because he understands what’s going on,” Gourley said.

After class, he showed it to her. She applied the approach to a problem and it worked, Gourley said. Later, his mother took the approach formula to her math professor at Utah Valley University, Ben Moulton. He and the Developmental Math Department Chair Max Aeschbacher were able to prove the approach. A couple months later, Moulton and Brown were accepted to present it at the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges Thursday and Friday.

“There is similar stuff out there but not as simply and elegantly put, in my opinion, than what Brock came up with,” Moulton said.

They are in the process of registering the approach for copyright.

Though Gourley said Brock has to practice for his AP calculus tests like anyone else, she said he is fun to teach because he is always innovating and figuring out alternative methods in her class. Kids look up to him as a math tutor and for his approach.


It was just one of those things that I did. I thought it was a gem, it was really easy, but my vision of where it could go ended there.

–Brock Brown


“He thinks beyond. He doesn’t think inside a box, he doesn’t limit himself to what somebody has told him. He figures things out himself,” Gourley said. “Kids will say, ‘Isn’t there a shorter way to do this?’ But they won’t take the initiative to figure it out.”

He has always quenched his curiosity in class, Brock said. In fourth grade, he taught himself to find the area of a trapezoid.

“The teacher didn’t even know how,” Brock said.

When his mother began taking classes from Moulton, Brock asked if the professor would send him math problems to solve for an additional challenge.

“I tried to stump him and I couldn’t,” Moulton said.

Brock was a little surprised that people would be so interested in something he came up with in class one day, he said.

“It was just one of those things that I did. I thought it was a gem, it was really easy, but my vision of where it could go ended there,” Brock said. ”You know, you’re you, you’re insignificant, you’re one in a trillion. The way you think about you, you’re just you. And that’s that. I think it was a pretty good gem that I found but did I think the world would want me to share it with them? No. Did I really care that they would or they wouldn’t? Not really.”

But Brock doesn’t just see himself as “math intelligent” and hopes not to just be labeled as such. He sees the world and everything in it as related and part of each other – including his identity – which may have been why he was able to find the patterns in Pascal's Triangle and create his approach. He said he often looks at the big picture, that instead of looking closer, he broadens his view.

“I’ve realized the perspective I take on life, it’s helped me to see things differently, obviously, but it’s motivated me to try to share this perspective with others,” Brock said. “I have a firm belief if that everyone understood this and had been raised to understand this from childhood, I think the world would be brimfull of prodigies. I think discoveries would be made past my imagination, past anyone’s imagination.”

His interests range from soccer to music and art, math to the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he finds common threads in each topic. Then he plays with them: he arranges music, numbers and applies scriptures to his life.

Having his approach proven gives Brock a way to contribute and share his perspective, he said.

“I’ve been most excited about my ability to, and my opportunity to, help other people in math, or in life, or in anything,” Brock said. “I’ve been most excited about the reputation this has given me – not because I define myself as a math person but because I hope that through this people can see, ‘This guy’s smart, if what he did works for him, maybe it will work for me.’ And it will work for them, but it’s hard to say that (without credibility). I’ve been most excited what it’s enabled me to give to people.”

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