Under the direction of Dr. Joseph Karwoski, five students (Nathan Radebach, Mitchell Vogatsky, Phillip Miller, Alex Chiappini, and Wyatt Braniff) from CCHS joined 1,281 high-school teams (over 5,000 students) from 29 states on Sunday, March 3rd to compete on a real-world competition. Designed to pique high-schoolers' interest in real-world mathematics, the Internet-based Challenge gives participants 14 hours to solve a genuine problem that may be social, political, financial, or otherwise relevant to their lives using applications of mathematics.
This year’s problem was: Waste Not, Want Not: Putting Recyclables in Their Place.
The problem is completely unknown to teams until they log on for the Challenge Day. Teams download the problem at 7:00 a.m. and have until 9:00 p.m. that night to research the topic, gather data, develop assumptions and analyses, establish mathematical models, and present their findings, using help from any free, publicly available, and inanimate sources of information. Once all of the teams upload their solutions, the work begins for more than 80 PhD-level mathematicians, whose job it is to read and pare down the hundreds of submissions to just the very best that qualify for prizes. Judging occurs in three stages. The final rank order of the top six teams is determined at the third stage, which involves in-person presentations at Moody's Corporation headquarters in Manhattan in April. Winners receive scholarship prizes totaling $115,000.00 at an awards ceremony immediately following their presentations.
The M3 Challenge spotlights applied mathematics and computational science as powerful problem-solving tools and as practical courses of study and meaningful professions. Through participation in the Challenge, young people realize that math is not only useful, but fun.
