Edison Students Vying For $100K In In International Math Finals

EDISON, NJ - Five students from Edison Academy Magnet School have advanced to the finals of an international math competition after spending 14 hours working on a problem centered on the financial and social impacts of online sports betting.

The team — Ashwath Ram, Vedaswaroop Kunamneni, Sreethan Gangavarapu, Alexander Poon, and Ishan Nagpal — is one of nine finalist teams selected from 770 entries in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge, known as M3 Challenge.

The competition drew more than 3,430 high school juniors and seniors in the United States and sixth form students in the United Kingdom this year.

The students will travel to New York City on April 27 to present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians for final judging.

Teams were asked to use mathematical modeling to answer questions including how much money is lost annually to sports gambling in the U.S. and U.K., and how much spending is too much for an individual.

The Edison team's submission was selected as one of the best solutions for assessing both financial risk and broader societal impacts of online sports gambling.

"Before M3 Challenge, concepts like Markov chains were things we'd simply watch on YouTube and appreciate in theory," team member Ishan Nagpal said. "However, as we worked on the real-world issue of online gambling, we saw how the same mathematics we enjoy can allow us to discover the patterns that influence financial burden."

The team's math teacher and coach, Michelle Gomes, said the competition gave students the chance to apply skills developed at the school across multiple disciplines. "The project enabled students to apply many skills developed at the academy — algorithms, graph analysis, technical writing, physics and statistics — all within a practical context," she said.

Now in its 21st year, M3 Challenge is a program of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and is sponsored by MathWorks. Winning teams will share $100,000 in scholarships, with the top team receiving $20,000.

The other eight finalist teams are from schools in Chandler, Arizona; North Ridgeville, Ohio; Delray Beach, Florida; Alexandria, Virginia; Frisco, Texas; New York City; and two schools in the United Kingdom.

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