As a student in this class, I learn mathematical concepts through open-ended questions by building on my previous math knowledge to develop my understanding of mathematics. We started the year by looking at the math behind shuffling cards and recognizing patterns. After, we learned how to create models for various problems and participated in the HiMCM math competition. More information about mathematical modeling work I have done can be found below. We then had a brief unit on statistics and have started working with problems that introduce some precalculus concepts while reviewing concepts from algebra and geometry.
For this assignment, we created a model for the hypothetical Epsilon School. The school was increasing their student population, so 7 additional faculty were to be added. Given data on current faculty department distribution, class sizes, and dropout rate, small groups were asked to determine which departments the 7 additional faculty should ideally belong to. I worked with Travis Tran and Emily Wang. To see a more detailed assignment description, click here.
Given basic information about calendars and the dates of some famous people’s birthdays, in small groups we created a model to determine what day of the week someone was born on. This assignment was our first Problem of the Week, or POW. For this assignment, my group included Kweku Akese and Marlon Jost. To learn more about this assignment, click here.
HiMCM, or High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling, is an international math competition. Each year, teams create a model for a complex, real life problem. This year, my group of four (Giang Pham, Anya Kelley, and Anshika Shekhar) worked over three days to create a model to answer real world problems related to pollinators, specifically bees. A large part of the process was research, and this gave me the opportunity to learn about a topic I did not know much about previously. A more detailed description of the problem can be found here.