According to contest officials the Mason team worked for 14 straight hours competing with students for an international online math modeling competition.
Their focus was calculating the predicted growth of e-bike use and its impact on society, said officials.
The Mason students – Oliver Gao, Matthew Qiu, Jason Wang, Katie Wilson, and David Zhang - make up one of the eight finalist teams in MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge), a unique competition that drew nearly 3,000 11th and 12th graders in the U.S. and students in the U.K. this year.
The team, whose work underwent intense scrutiny by judges in the first two rounds of assessment, has one last hurdle on Monday when they present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians for final validation.
Using mathematical modeling, students had to come up with solutions to real-world questions: How many e-bikes will be sold in the next two years? Of the many factors that contribute to e-bike use and sales growth, which are most significant? For a given country or region, can we quantify the impact that e-bike use has on carbon emissions, traffic congestion, or other key factors?
A total of 650 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations. Roughly 45% of those submissions included technical computing to support and enhance their solutions, and those coding skills make them eligible for additional scholarship prizes.
Now in its 18th year, M3 Challenge is a program of Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and is sponsored by MathWorks. It spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education and careers in applied math, computational and data sciences, and technical computing. Winning teams will be awarded a share of $100,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $20,000 in 2023.
Mason teacher and team coach Colleen Everett said: “This group of five students, and friends, took the initiative to pursue this challenge all on their own,” says William Mason High School teacher-coach Colleen Everett. “Their combined skillset allowed them to successfully create a product they were proud of.”
Mason Schools Superintendent Jonathan Cooper said: “We are so very proud of these Mason mathematicians who exemplify what we hope all Mason learners will seek to do - solve real-world problems. Katie, David, Matthew and Jason’s initiative in coming together to think critically about an issue facing our world is the kind of worthy challenge we want learners to embrace.”
About the Author
