Math Modeling at MAMS isn't like your typical high school math class. In math modeling, we learn to use common math concepts to model problems to come up with objective recommendations that will help solve the problem. Math modelling is taught by Mrs. Durost, and so far this year, we have worked on math concepts challenging POWs (problem of the week) and participated in math modelling competitions such as HiMCM (High School Math Modelling Competition) and MTFC (Modelling the Future Challenge).
This POW involved two players, A and B. Player A fills rows of their grid with A’s and B’s, while Player B fills columns of their grid. Player A wins if any row matches Player B’s column; otherwise, Player B wins. This problem combined strategy and probability to reach a solution.
In this POW, we were tasked with creating a formula to find the day of the week someone was born on given their birthday. This problem seemed easy, but was pretty challenging as we had to account for leap years and the irregular number of days in each month. After testing multiple methods, we came up with a formula that worked for all dates excluding any date before 1900 as the Gregorian calendar was different.
The Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC) is a math modeling competition where teams of up to 5 students choose a real-world problem to model and solve over the course of a few weeks. This year, our team consisted of me, Isaac, Salman, Neil, and Ishan. Our problem involved creating a model data center's energy expenditures and recommending strategies to reduce energy consumption based on nationwide energy data. Through this competition, we learned a lot about energy consumption and data analysis.