More than 3,300 high school and sixth form students throughout the United States, England, and Wales have registered for this year’s MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge) and will spend up to 14 hours trying to devise the best solution to a real-life, open-ended problem. Using mathematical modeling and other skills and experiences, participants will work in teams of 3-5 to understand and define the problem, gather data and information, document their assumptions, and devise a mathematical model to provide insight about the issues presented in the problem.
Teams will not know the topic until they log in and download the problem any time during Challenge weekend (February 25–28), which starts the clock on their 14 consecutive hours of work. They must submit their solution via computer upload before their time runs out. This year 770 teams have registered: 688 from 48 U.S. states and territories and 82 from England and Wales.
The top six teams, the top three teams recognized for technical computing distinction, and the top-ranking UK team will be identified through a rigorous judging process and will present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians on April 25 in New York City, with expenses paid by M3 Challenge.
Preparation is key in this unique, internet-based competition. To give every team the opportunity for success in the modeling process, many free online resources are made available.
Now in its seventeenth year, M3 Challenge is sponsored by Natick, Massachusetts-based MathWorks, a leading global software developer, and is a program of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The competition is designed to motivate students to study and pursue careers in computational science, applied math, data science, and technical computing. Learn more about M3 Challenge.
To find out which schools in your area registered for M3 Challenge this year, view the full list of registered teams.
About Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an international society of more than 14,000 individual, academic and corporate members from 100 countries. SIAM helps build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology to solve real-world problems through publications, conferences, and communities like chapters, sections and activity groups. Learn more at siam.org.
