Westminster College Represented in International Mathematical Contest

Four three-member teams of Westminster College students participated in the International Mathematical Contest in Modeling Feb. 14-18.

The Westminster teams were: Anthony Colwell, Ryan Brolley, and Mark Gordon; John Cochran, Nikki Snyder, and Jared Ronan; Ben Jarrett, Bill Shondelmyer, and Patrick "PJ" Thomas; Andrew Polack, James Bryan, and Bryan Bischof.

The Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) is a unique international contest designed to challenge teams of students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems. The contest attracts diverse students and faculty advisers from over 500 institutions around the world. The Westminster teams were under the direction of Dr. Barbara Faires, Westminster professor of mathematics.

The contest is designed to provide students with an experience similar to that which an applied mathematician or other quantitative scientist is likely to encounter in industry or in a research laboratory. Problems are chosen to model real-world situations and generally do not have a known solution or unique method of attack.

Each team chose one of two downloaded problems they would work to solve. Work continued through the weekend, conducting research; developing strategies to model the system; solving the problem; quantitatively comparing solutions; implementing the strategies on the computer; using programs to generate data and determine how to display the data; and writing a proposed solution.

Completed papers were submitted to the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications, who oversaw the competition.

Papers are graded on the likelihood that the proposed method would lead to a reasonable solution, at least under certain simplified conditions. The written proposal is crucial, since the method must be clearly understood by someone reading the proposal for only a short time, and sufficient experimentation must be done to convince the reader the approach is valid.

Visit www.comap.com/contests or contact Faires at (724) 946-7293 or e-mail faires@westminster.edu for additional information. 

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