Can you explain this?... FFS mathematicians (l to r) Brooke C., Karen S., Evan H., Pierce S. and Luke V. show off their final presentation after working all day.
5 FFS Students + 14 Hours in the Library + 1 Math Problem
By Brooke C.
Once a year, The Moody Foundation puts together a high school math competition; teams comprised of three to five students are given an applied math-modeling challenge, 14 hours, unrestricted internet access, calculators, textbooks, and anything else they need.
The Moody Foundation calls this annual event “Moody’s Mega Math Challenge” (nicknamed M3). The foundation grants $100,000 in scholarship prizes, and says that the challenge is “…designed to increase interest in and encourage high school students to pursue math-related studies and careers.”
It is an internet-based competition. On the day of the event, the problem is released; teams are given a model to format their answer, which is then uploaded to Moody’s website. Six weeks later, the top 23 teams are informed of their success, and the top six teams begin to prepare a PowerPoint presentation of their research paper to show in New York City.
The 2010 Moody’s Mega Math Challenge consisted of 2,884 high school juniors and seniors, and 633 teams from 18 states; The Family Foundation School was one of those teams. The Family Foundation School team had big shoes to fill, as the school placed 17th out of 431 teams last year.
On a Sunday morning, Luke V. (a member of the 2009 team who was designated to be the leader this year), Karen S., Evan H., Pierce S., and Brooke C. arrived at the FFS library at seven o’clock with their coach, Jim Kavarnos. Then, for the first time, they were told what they would work on. They met briefly and began brainstorming ideas on how to solve their seemingly impossible problem.
The report had to address three main questions: How do we calculate the Census undercount? What is a better way to apportion delegates to the House of Representatives? What recommendations need to be made to the government regarding Congressional district lines?
This required a lot of hard work. Luke commented; “Our team worked well together; the math was good and I learned a lot.”
Meeting sporadically during the day the group discussed the problem, fixed any errors, came up with ideas, and assigned tasks. The students remained in the library the entire time, and meals, drinks, and snacks were brought up to them. Karen S. said, “I think it was stressful but good; Evan screamed a lot but it was still fun.” As Karen said, it wasn’t easy, but somehow everything came together. Evan added, “Working with other people to solve a problem was a great experience for me even though I lost my cool a few times.”
Fourteen hours later, the final product was created: a research paper with a summary, a detailed answer to each question with explanations, graphs, tables, and equations, and a conclusion. The report even came with its own table of contents. The group came up with two mathematical equations: One equation to account for the misrepresentations in the Census undercount, and one equation to apportion delegates. When compared with professional results the equations had an error percentage of 0.0075% and 0.000% respectively. Pages of proof were also accumulated to show the need to redraw congressional districts.
All this was able to be accomplished because the team worked well together, listened to each other, and assumed different roles in the challenge. Pierce S. said, “Each person on the team had a variety of different skills and we all brought something to the table. We made a good team, it would be cool if we could get scholarship money, but if not, it was fun and I learned a lot.”
Kavarnos was proud of the team saying, “You guys did a good job with the math, it was hard.” Principal Annie Janauer agreed, “We picked a good team to do this job.”
The team, Kavarnos, and everybody involved is now waiting patiently and hopefully for the scores to be announced.
