New Trier High School Team Makes Finals Of Math Modeling Challenge

WINNETKA, IL — A team of New Trier Township High School students advanced to the finals of an international math modeling challenge.

More than 2,700 students from the U.S. and U.K. took part in this year's MathWorks Math Modeling, or M3, Challenge.

The challenge asks students to come up with a mathematical model to a real-world challenge.

Unlike a math problem, or a word problem, modeling using math to develop a deeper understanding of a real-world problem, according to the Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, or SIAM, which has held the challenge for the past 17 years.

New Trier coach Bradley Kuklis said the M3 Challenge is a fantastic chance to give students a taste of what a modern mathematician is expected to accomplish.

“Too often in high school math classes, the wrong skills are emphasized. Many students think that the mark of a good mathematician is being able to work alone and getting the objectively correct solution. This couldn’t be further from the truth," Kulkis said in a statement. "As data science and applied math gain prominence in both research and industry, mathematicians need to be able to effectively collaborate on large-scale projects and convincingly argue their results."

This year's challenge, "Remote Work: Fad or Future," asked students to use math to determine whether the shift to remote work prompted by the coronavirus pandemic will continue.

Teams were asked to create models to estimate the percentage of workers in a given city who are employed in jobs that are currently "remote-ready," to predict whether individual workers in such jobs will be allowed to and choose to remotely and, using the first models, to predict how many workers will end up working remotely in a given city.

Karen Bliss, of Virginia Military Institute, an M3 Challenge Judge and lead problem developer, explained this year's topic touches on several major issues the world faces this year.

“As a result of the pandemic, many people suddenly shifted to working from home. While they may have initially been unprepared, for many people work from home is the ‘new normal,’" Bliss said in a statement.

"We're at a critical juncture where businesses are deciding whether to allow workers to stay home, go back to the office, or have some hybrid model moving forward," she added. "There are many facets to consider, not least of which is the current labor shortage in many fields."

New Trier's five-member team was of one six who make it past the first two rounds of assessments.

The team, the first group of New Trier students to take part in the challenge, spent 14 straight hours over a weekend in February working on the problem.

But the work started months earlier, according to team member Max Hartman, who said the students met weekly to study papers from past finalists and become familiar with mathematical modeling.

"We also learned about many different technologies by participating, such as LaTeX, Python, and Machine Learning. But I think that the most important things were the non-technical skills we developed – effective communication, time-management, planning," Hartman said in a statement. "Overall, we gained valuable experience in applied mathematics that we will all carry into our undergraduate careers and beyond."

The other finalist teams include two coached by Paul Kim at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, as well as High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, Homestead High School in Mequon, Wisconsin, and Pine View School in Osprey, Florida.

There were 612 papers submitted to the challenge. Of those, 113 advanced to the second round of judging. About 37 teams will be receive scholarship prizes, including the six finalist squads, who will each be awarded between $5,000 and $20,000.

On April 25, they are due to present their findings to a panel of mathematicians for a final round of judging.