For 14 straight hours in early March, a small group of Canyon Crest Academy students came together to participate in an international online math competition, according to a news release. A combination of math smarts and creative thinking has added up to a spot in the finals for the team, whose submission was selected as one of the best solutions to the double whammy crises of affordable housing and homelessness with which local and national governments are currently grappling.
The CCA students – Michelle Liang, Evan Luo, Jonathan Xue, Larry Wu, and Stephen Zhu – make up one of the nine finalist teams in MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge (M3 Challenge), a unique competition that drew nearly 3,000 11th and 12th graders in the U.S. and sixth form students in the U.K. this year, the news release stated. The team, whose work underwent intense scrutiny by judges in the first two rounds of assessment, has one last hurdle when they head to New York City on April 29 to present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians for final validation.
Using mathematical modeling, students had to come up with solutions to real-world questions: How do we solve the intertwined crises of homelessness and a shortage of affordable housing, especially given that they are often exacerbated by unforeseen circumstances such as natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and economic downturns? Can we predict long-term changes in the housing supply and unhoused population? If so, how can we use this information to devise real, long-term solutions for homelessness?
Now in its 19th year, M3 Challenge is a program of Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and is sponsored by MathWorks. It spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education and careers in applied math, computational and data sciences, and technical computing. Winning teams will be awarded a share of $100,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $20,000.
A total of 643 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations. Roughly 45% of those submissions included technical computing to support and enhance their solutions, and those coding skills make them eligible for additional scholarship prizes.
“The cost of housing in the U.S. and the U.K. has increased faster than people’s incomes, making rent or mortgage payments challenging for many,” said Dr. Karen Bliss, senior manager of Education and Outreach at SIAM, in the news release. “This issue is often due to a shortage of available housing, which has reached crisis levels and has been associated with a significant increase in homelessness in many large cities.”
“Stable housing can ease homelessness and is often an important first step in helping people tackle other challenges like addiction, mental health issues, and unemployment, but increasing the housing supply is slow and requires significant financial investment,” Bliss explained in the news release. “There are also other complex issues to consider, such as land restrictions, population growth, financial constraints, and longevity of a housing structure.”
The team’s coach, mathematics professor Brian Shay, explained in the news release that “MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge is a fabulous opportunity for students to apply deep mathematics to relevant situations. It is the only competition that has students think and act like professional mathematicians in the workforce. By having students work in a small group, immerse themselves into one large problem, and explore how math can be used to make sense of the problem, they see how math can be applied to all aspects of life. M3 Challenge helps us to teach our students that communication of technical information is as essential as the accuracy and content of the information.”
Team member Evan Luo said that he found M3 Challenge to be a unique competition that offers valuable insights into the practical applications of mathematics and effective communication.
“MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge has given my team new insights on the use of mathematics and statistics. Unlike other competitions, where the concept of math seems vaguely applicable to the world around us, M3 Challenge has built a competition where we can take real data and apply our ideas to real problems, all in a fun environment,” Luo said in the news release. “As a team during those 14 hours, we learned to problem solve as a group, conduct research, and articulate our thoughts into solutions.”
In addition to Canyon Crest Academy, the other finalist teams hail from schools in Alexandria, Virginia; Andover, Massachusetts; Basking Ridge, New Jersey; Elmhurst, Illinois; Gainesville, Florida; Livingston, New Jersey; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Watford, Hertfordshire.
For more information about M3 Challenge, visit m3challenge.siam.org/the-challenge/
To access this year’s challenge problem, visit m3challenge.siam.org/2024-problem/
To see the full list of finalist, semi-finalist, and honorable mention teams, visit shorturl.at/GKSW5
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