Written by Rand Wise
What did you do with your Winter Break? Five Paideia students, Thomas Schiavo ’25, Alok Ahn ’25, Quinn Dyer ’24, Gabriel Holmann ’24, and William Rudolph ’25, dedicated an entire day during their break to competing in the Mathworks Math Modeling Challenge. This competition sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has become famous for tasking high school juniors and seniors with solving big societal problems. Students must understand the full complexity of the problem, analyze it mathematically and propose public policy solutions. Past problems have looked at equity in democratic representation, the looming water crisis in the American Southwest, recycling, food waste, substance abuse and many more.
The team received this year's problem at 7 a.m. on Sunday and spent the next 14 hours producing a mathematically rigorous solution that was heavy on mathematical modeling and coding. The endeavor required the synthesis of many skills, including evaluating data, developing mathematical models and formulating a solution to the intertwined problems of affordable housing and homelessness plaguing many U.S cities. Over six hundred teams from across the U.S. and the U.K. submitted proposals. While the Paideia team did not place, they received honorable mention for the quality of their writing and for the coding they incorporated into their work. Congratulations to the team on their achievement and kudos on making such a time commitment during break!
For more information on the contest, click here.