Holmdel, Marlboro Students Compete in Math Challenge, Chance to Win $20K

LINCROFT, NJ - Five students from Marlboro Twp. and Holmdel who attend High Technology High School have advanced to the finals in the popular Moody’s Mega Math (M3) Challenge, the only competition of its kind, which this year drew more than 5,100 11th and 12th grade participants from across the nation. The Lincroft team will head to New York City on April 24 to compete against five other finalist teams at Moody’s Corporation World Trade Center headquarters. They have a chance at winning the grand prize of $20,000.

The students are Arvind Yalavarti from Marlboro, Lori Zhang from Marlboro, Eric Jiang from Marlboro, Anjali Nambrath from Marlboro and Kevin Yan from Holmdel. Ellen LeBlanc, a math teacher at High Technology High School, was their coach.

“The Moody's Foundation, in my opinion, has created one of the best high school math modeling competitions,” said LeBlanc. “The competition challenges students to make assumptions, gather data, problem solve, create models and draw conclusions. The students learn how to work together and write a concise and complete mathematical paper – it is a fantastic experience.”

“At High Technology, students and the math faculty spend a great deal of time discussing real world events and how we could possibly model them,” she said. “For example, this year we discussed at length a number of topics including the electoral college, health care and even bumble bees.”

For team member Anjali Nambrath, placing as a finalist in the M3 Challenge is a tremendous opportunity that she says will help open doors in the future. “The M3 Challenge was an opportunity to really delve into the insights math can provide in the real world,” she said. “We applied the theoretical knowledge we learned in math classes to a critical global issue, and it felt good to know that what we were doing had real, tangible relevance to the wider world. All the teamwork, collaboration, brainstorming, formulating and revising condensed into 14 hours was a truly rewarding and memorable experience for my teammates and me.”

Using mathematical modeling, the students had 14 hours in late February to come up with a solution to a real-world issue – helping the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) devise a plan for future growth and sustainability in spite of global change factors expected to affect both resources and visits at its 417 national sites country wide. More than 1,100 participating teams from across the U.S. submitted papers detailing their recommended solution.

Organized by Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and sponsored by The Moody’s Foundation, the M3 Challenge – now in its 12th year – spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education and careers in math and science. Approximately 90 scholarship prizes totaling $150,000 are up for grabs, with the champion team receiving $20,000.