The Math Modeling course at Mass Academy is a combination of math modeling and problem-solving based learning math. The math modeling portion of the course teaches students how to use Microsoft Excel for statistics, how to do different statistical tests, and challenges students to think beyond the barriers of conventional math courses. During this portion of the course, students participate in various different competitions such as HiMCM, MTFC, and MathWorks. The problem-solving based learning math allows students to learn Pre-Calculus while also being able to develop their problem-solving skills. Almost all problems in this class cannot be solved directly by using a specific formula, and instead require critical thinking.
MTFC is a team based actuarial science competition which we participate in, here at Mass Academy. For this competition, we create a math modeling-based proposal to a real-world situation/issue. Our group has chosen to model the risk involved with investing in stocks. In order to mitigate this risk, we have employed multiple different strategies, which are all intended to benefit retail investors. Currently we have finished our proposal, and are starting to gather data for our math model.
POWs (Problem of the Week) are fun math problems which we solve occasionally throughout the year in Math Modeling. The second POW of the year involved finding what day of the week a person is born on while only being able to use their birth date and year. Due to logical constraints in the math, this only works for those individuals who are born on or after the date of January 1st, 1901. Our solution to this problem along with an example solution is also included in our report.