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.
Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC)
The Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC) is a math modeling competition held by the Actuarial Foundation that focuses on creating math models that reflect some type of risk analysis for specific real-world simulating problems. Along with a mandatory problem to model, teams must come up with their own problems to identify risks for and model their mitigation. In the Project Proposal document below, you'll be able to see the topic of my team's chosen problem — wrongful convictions in our justice system and how to reduce them - as well as risk assessments we've conducted and what we've concluded based on them. Currently, we're looking for datasets to be able to build our model from and plan on meeting with an MTFC mentor to discuss further steps.