This course explores math concepts through many problems and projects. We participate in multiple math modeling competitions, including the Modeling the Future Challenge, and the High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM) We also do many contest math problems, as well as studying precalculus and statistics.
MTFC
MTFC, or Modeling the Future Challenge, is a math modeling competition that attempts to teach students about actuarial science.
Students analyze a topic assigned to them, as well as a separate topic of their choice, and model the scenario to determine what risks are involved, and how to mitigate them.
One part of the competition involves creating a proposal for our topic that answers basic questions about it. We decided to study the risks caused by cyber crime. We also had to fill out a similar document about the assigned topic, which is diabetes.
This is the project proposal we wrote for cyber crime.
HiMCM Practice
HiMCM is a math modeling competition where competitors create models to solve real-world problems that are assigned to them. As of January 2025, HiMCM solutions are still confidential. For this reason, I have instead included the assignment we used to prepare for it.
The problem was that existing rankings of roller coasters tend to be highly subjective, and we were challenged to create a math model to objectively determine the best roller coasters. Our model assigned a score to every roller coaster based on numerical parameters supplied in a dataset. This model was used to create a ranking.
Our top roller coasters were the following:
- Kingda Ka
- Top Thrill Dragster
- Steel Dragon: 2000
- Superman: Escape from Krypton
- Alpengeist
- Leviathan
- Tower of Terror II
- Intimidator 305
- Millenium Force
- Montu
We made this slideshow to present our results.