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## Is U.S. High-Speed Rail Worth the Cost?

For nearly 5,000 high school students in this year’s M3 Challenge, that’s the $100,000 question Anyone who has filled their gas tank—or just passed by a gas station—in the past few weeks knows that the cost of gas is on the rise again. Gas prices today are 10 percent higher than they were a year ago and are projected to reach$5.00 a gallon in some parts of the country by Memorial Day.

This is a major reason why our country’s leaders are revisiting the need to establish alternate methods of transportation that are less influenced by oil prices. Just last month, a federal highway bill that would overhaul transportation programs and available funding for mass transit was heatedly debated in Congress.

This past weekend, thousands of high school students also weighed in on the mass transit issue, as competing teams in Moody’s Mega Math (M3) Challenge, an Internet-based applied-math modeling contest organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Read the rest of this entry »

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## High school students tackle timely issues with mathematics

29 eligible states and \$115K in scholarship prizes in Moody’s expanding math modeling contest

What are some of the biggest challenges facing America today? Stimulating the economy, achieving energy independence, extending Social Security benefits, preserving dwindling natural resources?

Incredibly, groups of high school students have attempted to provide solutions for each and every one of these issues as participants in Moody’s Mega Math (M3) Challenge. An Internet-based, high-school applied math contest, the M3 Challenge introduces students to math as a powerful tool to solve realistic problems, analyze and interpret relevant issues, and predict outcomes of current events and situations. 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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## Making math real with Moody’s Mega Math Challenge

As America strives to become more competitive in the global economy, many schools across the U.S. are increasing their focus on math and science education and pushing for higher standards in science, technology, engineering, and math courses. Of equal importance, however, is the students’ ability to apply their knowledge to real-world issues: a skill that will eventually allow them to translate their education to successful careers in research and industry.

That is the idea behind Moody’s Mega Math (M3) Challenge, an applied math modeling contest for high school juniors and seniors funded by The Moody’s Foundation and organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

The realistic focus of the contest–which is different from what students routinely encounter in standard school curricula–spotlights math as a powerful problem solving tool and educates participants on its relevance to worldly issues. For instance, participating teams in past years have pondered the effectiveness of ethanol as biofuel and have proposed ideas to improve the U.S. Census count.

“Being involved in this project (the M3 Challenge), I saw how pertinent [math] is to the everyday life of the average American citizen,” said Scott Yu, whose team won the top prize in the 2010 Challenge. “Seeing the tremendous role statisticians and mathematicians can have on American society–that was tremendously valuable and important to me.” Read the rest of this entry »

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