{"id":4776,"date":"2020-11-23T15:00:51","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/student-lounge\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2020-11-16T19:12:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T18:12:05","slug":"high-school-sixth-form-students-tackle-real-world-issues-with-math-modeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/student-lounge\/2020\/11\/23\/high-school-sixth-form-students-tackle-real-world-issues-with-math-modeling\/","title":{"rendered":"High School & Sixth Form Students Tackle Real-World Issues with Math Modeling"},"content":{"rendered":"

MathWorks Math Modeling\u00a0(M3)\u00a0Challenge<\/a> is a contest for high school juniors and seniors. The challenge has been around since 2006 and has been open to student participants in the US, but this year we are excited to share that it\u2019s expanding to also include sixth form students in England and Wales. The challenge is organized by SIAM \u2013 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and allows teams to work on a real-world problem in a 14-hour window of time with additional resource constraints, to give students a glimpse of the type of problems professional mathematicians encounter in industry.<\/p>\n

The M3 Challenge offers students a transformative high school experience and a chance to win thousands of dollars in scholarships. Students use mathematical expertise, research, and brainstorming to evaluate data and build a solution to interesting current world issues. Last year’s problem “Keep On Trucking”<\/a> had students recommend solutions for the trucking industry\u2019s transition from diesel to electric power. “Better Ate Than Never\u201d<\/a> by Cleve Moler walks you through an example solution to another previous M3 Challenge problem using MATLAB. This blog illustrates how easy MATLAB makes it to analyze, visualize, and perform computations on data.<\/p>\n

Teams determined\u00a0to have the best solution papers receive special recognition in the form of tuition scholarships for college education. The<\/strong> M3 Technical Computing Scholarship Award\u00a0<\/strong>honors teams for outstanding use of programming (like MATLAB), which they use to analyze, visualize, and perform computations on data. You can learn more about the particulars of this award here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"photograph\"<\/p>\n

Starting with the 2021 season, hundreds of sixth form students (ages 16-18)\u00a0in England and Wales are expected to\u00a0join U.S.\u00a0high school students\u00a0in competing for more than $100,000\u00a0(\u00a379,000)\u00a0in scholarship prizes. Registration\u00a0is open through February 19, 2021. Challenge weekend begins Friday, February 26, and runs through Monday, March 1.\u00a0Of the hundreds of participating teams, nine winning teams are selected as finalists.\u00a0Submissions\u00a0are\u00a0judged by a national panel of\u00a0150\u00a0largely\u00a0Ph.D.-level mathematicians. The competition final\u00a0presentation\u00a0event\u00a0and awards ceremony\u00a0is traditionally held in New York City in late\u00a0April\u00a0\u2013 an\u00a0all-expense paid\u00a0experience for the\u00a0finalist teams.\u00a0When the final event last season was derailed due to COVID-19, SIAM encouraged finalist teams to send in video presentations of their work for an extra \u201cOutstanding Communication of Results\u201d award. Check out the creative entry from Pine View School who won the competition in 2020 below.<\/p>\n