HiMCM is a Mass Academy rite of passage. Every November, juniors get into groups of 3-4 and spend 3 days solving a math problem. HiMCM is a math modeling competition, meaning we are given a prompt and we need to find the data and come up with the models to answer all parts of the prompt. I had Lindsey Paradise, Timothy Schowalter, and Claire Newcom in my group (they were an amazing group), and it was a lot of fun. We all worked very well together which was good for the times when we needed to divide and conquer sections of the prompt. We decided to do Prompt A: modeling dandelions because, quite frankly, we thought it would be more fun and impressive to solve than Prompt B. We spent many long hours coming up with the solution (shout out to Lindsey as the MVP who coded the model we used in our solution), but in the end, we had a very nice 25 page-paper. This project was messy, and most of us were sleep deprived, but when all was said and done, I think we were all very proud of the work we had accomplished. This was the kind of project where it feels impossible at first, but once you finish it, you could not be more proud of the work you accomplished.
MTFC has been a really interesting competition for me. It is a new addition to the math modeling course, and it stands for Modeling the Future Challenge where we are tasked with modeling a mitigation strategy for a risk. The challenge is broken up into 3 phases with each phase getting more competitive. For the first phase, groups had to do two tasks. The first task was to respond to prompts about mitigating the risk a ski resort faces with different snowfall amounts. Each group had to answer these prompts and they were used to teach us the actuarial process. The second task was to answer prompts that helped us develop a risk of our choosing that we wanted to mitigate. This entire challenge has been rooted in actuarial science, something I had no experience with before this year. In fact, most of us haven’t. This has meant a lot of on-the-job learning (i.e. figuring out how to analyze the data, what to do with a linear regression model, how to come up with mitigation strategies, etc.), but we have really grasped the concepts and run with them. In my group, I have Lindsey Paradise, Heidy Rodriguez, Derek Desrosiers, and Anthony DeRosa, and I absolutely love working with them. It took us a while to figure out our topic and the risk we wanted to mitigate, but we decided on focusing on the risks hikers face while climbing mountains. This was a good decision, especially because a lot of us enjoy hiking and this combined a lot of subjects we were passionate about such as climate change (weather patterns are more unpredictable and dangerous) and disasters. Our group made to the final round with our project where we submitted our paper, a 15 minute presentation video, and had a live Q&A with a panel of judges. We ended up winning 4th place out of the 200+ teams that competed this year. I could not be more proud of my group and the work that we put in. I could not imagine having done the project with anyone else, and I hope to work with them next year for MTFC again. Thank you! We are Risky Business and our project is "Whether the Weather is Warm, Whether the Weather is Not, We'll Weather the Weather Whether We Like it or Not"!