Math Modeling
Math Modeling, taught by Ms. Burns, focuses on honing problem-solving,
critical thinking, and collaborative skills to translate course content to real-world applications. We cover a mix of
algebra, geometry, pre-calculus, and statistical concepts, and go through a variety of problem sets and competition-style challenge problems. Creating mathematical models for real-world situations is a huge focus in this class, and we apply those skills in modeling competitions like Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC) and High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM).
Epsilon School
The very first math modeling project we did in this class, and my first-ever experience with math modeling, was the Epsilon School project. The project focused on the fictional Epsilon School of Math and Science that wanted to hire new teachers in order to accomodate for an increasing student population. My group and I assessed assumptions, considerations, and background information to ensure fairness throughout our model (which we defined), and used ratios and proportions to calculate our answer. After we finished, we presented our model (below) and process to the class.
HiMCM Practice)
The High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM) is a math modeling competition held by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP) where teams of four compete to create a math model for a specific real-world simulating problem. HiMCM offers teams two problems to choose one from, and these problems span a wide variety of topics; for the practice HiMCM we had, the problems were about minimizing triathlon congestion and ranking rollercoasters from best to worst. My group chose the triathlon problem, and utilized a given dataset to build our model from. This was definitely a step up from the Epsilon Project, because we used more complex statistical methods to create a more optimized and accurate model. I thought this was a really cool experience because we got to see other teams' models for the same problem and see a variety of different approaches made.