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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 » by ## Plastic problem payoff for STEM savvy students 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 »

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## M3 Challenge: Behind the scenes

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.

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## Watch highlights from M3 Challenge 2012!

Watch highlights from Moody’s Mega Math Challenge 2012, where thousands of high school students from the Eastern U.S. created mathematical models to determine the best regions in the country for establishing rail lines as part of a revived High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program. The regions were ranked based on estimates of ridership numbers over the next 20 years, and costs of building and maintenance, in addition to the effects such rail networks would have on American dependence on foreign energy.

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## Moving mathematics beyond the classroom: Moody’s Mega Math Challenge

M3 Challenge emphasizes the practical implications of math

Skill in mathematics has traditionally been associated with being good with numbers. This has led to the conventional wisdom that the answers—and hence, grades—tend to be more clear-cut and unforgiving in math classes, allowing less room for the flair and creativity associated with the humanities where classes are more discussion-based and imaginative.

But it’s important to recognize that math isn’t always as absolute as it seems. Outside the classroom, the practical implications of math go far beyond cracking a complicated calculus problem. Math is being used to create models for disease therapy, simulations for climate change, and frameworks for financial markets—solving real-world problems whose answers suddenly aren’t just numbers or formulas anymore, but rather the basis for making decisions about the future. Read the rest of this entry »

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## Watch video highlights from M3 Challenge 2011!

Moody’s Mega Math Challenge 2011 is now behind us, but you can watch some of the highlights from this year’s contest through our video recaps.

Get an overview of the 2011 contest: from the problem to the final presentations and awards ceremony:

Watch winning team members talk about their experiences and view clips from their outstanding presentations:

The 2011 challenge at a glance:

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## 2010 Moody’s Mega Math Challenge Champions are now published authors

Students from Montgomery Blair High School celebrate with their coach after winning the 2010 Moody's Mega Math Challenge. Photo by Brad Hamilton Photography.

To come away with the top prize at a math modeling contest among 531 teams in 18 states is a feat in itself. But that was just the harbinger of things to come for Andrew Das Sarma, Jacob Hurwitz, David Tolnay, and Scott Yu from Montgomery Blair High School of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Since winning the \$20,000 award and the accolades that came with it at Moody’s Mega Math Challenge 2010 earlier this year, the team has been interviewed by Pimm Fox of Bloomberg radio, has presented its findings at Lockheed Martin’s Data Capture Center, and met with U.S. Census Bureau Director Dr. Robert Groves.

And now they’ve had their research published in SIAM’s prestigious undergraduate publication, SIAM Undergraduate Research Online (SIURO). Their paper provides suggestions and recommendations to improve the adjustment of the Census undercount, identifies the most accurate method available to apportion the U.S. House of Representatives, and determines the fairest way to draw Congressional districts.

To minimize error in strategies employed by the Census Bureau to make up for undercounting–the term used to denote the number of people excluded due to delayed or absent responses–the authors deem as effective only two of the three procedures currently used. The authors reason that post-Census sampling, which is undertaken to estimate the excluded number of individuals, is counterproductive, generating more errors than the ones it seeks to remedy in the first place. The other two processes employed by the Bureau, which include estimating values for missing data and analyzing population breakdown through public records, on the other hand, can provide valuable information to account for omitted individuals, the team concludes.

For accurately dividing seats in the House of Representatives based on the count, the paper analyzes the currently used Hill method and five alternative methods that have been used historically: Dean, Webster, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton-Vinton. The authors come to the conclusion that the Hamilton-Vinton method is the most appropriate to ensure fair political representation of states. With regard to proper apportionment of federal funds to states based on Census numbers, the paper proposes the impartial division of states according to population density.

The paper, reflecting the Montgomery Blair team’s 14-hour research work conducted during the M3 Challenge, was published with minimal editing for style and grammar in Volume 3 of SIURO. It appeared electronically on August 4, 2010.

A PDF of the paper can be accessed at:

http://www.siam.org/students/siuro/vol3/M3.pdf

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