This course goes beyond the traditional high school mathematics curriculum by engaging students in open-ended problem solving, computer simulations, and collaborative work. Students use a mathematical approach to model real-world situations through the application of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and statistics. This course is taught by Ms. Burns.
MTFC (Modeling The Future Challenge) is a competition that is held annually at Mass Academy. Students solve real world problems using the "actuarial" method. The competition is held in two rounds. The first is the scenario quest, where a scenario and datasets are given to the students and they have to answer questions that can help mitigate risk. The 2nd part is the project phase, where teams propose a problem that can be solved using the actuarial method. Our team included Medhansh, Sri, Jotham, and Vatsal. We proposed a project on the risks of investing in the stock market and how to mitigate them. We successfully moved onto the next round and are currently working on our project phase and meeting with our mentor.
A POW is a problem that requires a logical approach to solve. It is a group project that is
given and students have a week to solve it. One such problem that I enjoyed was the Birthday
POW. The problem description, along with the group's solution is below:
The goal is to find day of the week that someone was born given their birthday. No
information
could be used other than the days of the week for October 2024. We were also only allowed to
use
the 4 basic arithmetic operations to determine a set of instructions that anyone could follow
to
find the day of the week they were born.