After half a day spent squaring off with their peers on the best mathematical models for plastic accumulation and recycling in Moody’s Mega Math Challenge 2013, and winning their share of $115,000, the top six teams in this year’s contest had another prize waiting for them: a meeting with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

During a tour of New York City Hall following the event, the mayor met with the finalists, their coaches and parents, as well as organizers from the M3 Challenge. He spoke to them about the importance of applied mathematics and STEM education and careers, as well as of New York City as an excellent place for young people to live and work. View the photos!  Read the rest of this entry »

Minnesota team nabs $20K with math-based solution to recycling dilemma

New York, April 30, 2013 — Extraordinary problem-solving and creativity earned 29 high school students from Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania top honors—and top dollars—in the 2013 Moody’s Mega Math (M³) Challenge, a math modeling contest organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and sponsored by The Moody’s Foundation.

The champion team of five twelfth-graders from Plymouth, Minnesota-based Wayzata High School will share $20,000 from a total scholarship pool of $115,000, along with well-deserved bragging rights, after being selected from thousands of participants for coming up with the best mathematical solutions to the country’s –and world’s—growing plastic pollution and recycling crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

Learn more about Moody’s Mega Math Challenge, the high-school math modeling contest organized by SIAM, the history and inspiration behind the Challenge, and how the contest fulfills a SIAM goal to raise awareness of and enthusiasm about applied mathematics and computational science.

Michelle Montgomery, Project Director of the M³ Challenge, spoke to Sol Lederman of Wild About Math about all that and more, including the philanthropic motivations of The Moody’s Foundation in partnering with SIAM to sponsor the contest, and their shared objective to increase the pipeline of engineers and computational scientists.

Kathleen Fowler, mathematics professor at Clarkson University who co-authored the 2013 problem with Quinnipiac University’s Karen Bliss, spoke about the process of problem development for the Challenge and how she was inspired by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to focus this year’s problem on plastic pollution and recycling.

Listen to the complete podcast here.