By Ally White and Rachel Schwartz

Fourteen-year-old Aaron Anderson ’14 received a five on the Advanced Placement Calculus BC exam May 5.

Anderson prepared for the exam by taking a Calculus BC course through Johns Hopkins online Center for Talented Youth as an independent study course during eighth grade mentored by former math teacher Rod Huston and math teacher Dan Reeves ’94.

Anderson said that he had not shown much promise in math when he was young because memorizing multiplication tables did not interest him.

But once his grandfather began to teach him basic algebra in second and third grade, it became clear that math was a strong suit for him.

Anderson’s father then bought him a set of algebra CD-ROMs to teach him math. By fourth grade, Anderson had completed algebra I and II, and by the end of sixth grade, Anderson had gone through geometry, trigonometry, and Calculus AB, all outside of school.

This past summer, he started linear algebra and will be continuing with it and multivariable calculus as independent study, which he said “should get me through the end of ninth grade.”

“I tend to think mathematically. I just like finding things out and math is an efficient way to do so,” Anderson said.