The math course is taught by Ms. Burns and is one of the most non-traditional classes here. This course is discovery-based and encourages us to learn from each other and exchange knowledge: an especially informative experience because of the diversity of students and past experiences. Math is taught through a combination of in-class challenge problems, homework assignments, and Problem of the Week (POWs). So far, we have covered number theory, statistics, and Exeter math—problem sets from Phillips Exeter Academy—with math modeling in between.

Modeling The Future Challenge (MTFC) is a long-term math modeling project we work on. In teams of five, we identify an issue and then use math modeling to view future trends and identify patterns. The goal of the work is to develop an effective risk mitigation strategy. Our first MTFC assignment tasked us with identifying our problem and exploring three different categories of risk mitigation strategies, Behavior Change, Modifying Outcomes, and Insurance, and finding useful research databases. Our team identified soil erosion as our problem and outlined potential risk mitigation strategies, including intercropping and Farmer’s Insurance, in our Project Proposal (left). Click here if you are having trouble viewing it!

One of our shorter math-modeling projects was the Epsilon School project. Each group of three was provided with the number of students in various classes across grades. With the provided information, we were tasked with choosing which department to allocate seven new teachers to as fairly as possible for the upcoming school year. The definition of fairness was intentionally left up to interpretation, and this made the project especially interesting: attempting to quantify subjective topics. Click here if you are having trouble viewing it!