Johns Creek Students Advance In International Math Competition

JOHNS CREEK, GA — A global pandemic didn’t stop a group of Johns Creek High School students from coming together to participate in an international math competition. A combination of math smarts and creative thinking has added up to a top spot for the team, whose work was selected as one of the best solutions to the problem of how to make internet access available to everyone.

The students – Jason Bao, Aditya Bora, Mehul Dhoot, Joseph Suharno, and Austin Tsang of Johns Creek High School – advanced to the finals in MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Challenge, a competition that drew more than 2,400 11th and 12th graders in the U.S. and sixth form students in the U.K. this year. The team, whose work underwent scrutiny by judges in the first two rounds of assessment, has one last hurdle on April 26 when they present their findings virtually to a panel of professional mathematicians for final validation.

Using mathematical modeling, students had 14 consecutive hours in late February and early March to come up with a solution to a real-world issue: defeating the digital divide to make internet accessible to all. The M3 Challenge problem asked teams to create a model to predict what internet connectivity will cost over the next decade, how minimum required bandwidth should be determined, and an optimal way to distribute cellular nodes in a region to maximize access. A total of 535 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations.

“This year's topic touches on several relevant issues we are facing as a global community,” said M3 Challenge director of judging and lead problem developer Karen Bliss, Virginia Military Institute. “One is the social justice aspect of internet access. While this has been a problem for years, the pandemic has highlighted the reality of the digital divide: those who don't have fast, reliable internet are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to access to education and the ability to work from home, among many other things.”

Since there are many ways to access the internet (cable, fiber optic, cell phones, public Wi-Fi), it's not obvious how to best solve this problem.

“We asked students to think about how needs vary from person to person and how to best get high-speed internet to rural, suburban, and urban areas," Bliss said. "While there's no one mathematical approach that is the right way to answer these questions, we look forward to seeing how the students used mathematical modeling to reach an answer and explain how what they value shows up in their models."

Now in its 16th year, M3 Challenge is a program of Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and is sponsored by MathWorks. It spotlights applied mathematics as a 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 $125,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $22,500 in 2021.

In addition to Johns Creek High School, the five other finalist teams hail from high schools in Lincolnshire, Illinois (two teams); Lincroft, New Jersey; Livingston, New Jersey; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

“This team is made up of an incredible group of students,” Coach Julie Meert said. “M3 Challenge allows these students to participate in a ‘real world’ problem that tests their ability to use their accumulated math knowledge, think outside the box, and learn how to work together as a team. This opportunity has definitely helped them develop skills that will be advantageous to their future endeavors.”

Team member Aditya Bora found M3 Challenge to be unique among other math competitions, and fun too.

"What started as a simple poster hanging in Ms. Meert’s room encouraging students to join M3 Challenge blossomed into a riveting, exciting, and, at times, a bit frustrating, experience that transformed our perceptions of mathematical modeling in real-world settings," Bora said. "This Challenge pushed us to balance the quantitative and qualitative realms, breaking down our jumble of numbers into clear, concise explanations, and represents a great opportunity for high schoolers to set aside 14 hours with a couple of friends, crack open a soda, and see how they can utilize modeling to change the world. We were determined to win the challenge this year after being named an Honorable Mention last year and look forward to seeing the final results."

For the second year, all presentations and judging are taking place virtually instead of at an all-day, in-person event in New York City due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more information about M3 Challenge, visit m3challenge.siam.org.