Memphis Students Advance to Finals in National Math Competition

A combination of math smarts and creative thinking has added up to a top spot in a major national math competition for five White Station High School students.

The students – Kevin Luo, Jonathan Zhang, Krishna Dasari, Andrew Chen and Kevin Cao – advanced to the finals in MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Challenge, the only competition of its kind which this year drew more than 3,500 11th and 12th grade participants from across the nation. The Memphis, Tennessee team’s work is undergoing intense scrutiny by a panel of judges who will assess all the finalist papers one last time, gather commentary and come to a consensus on the final rank by Monday, April 27.

For the first time in the history of the competition, final judging will not be an all-day in-person event in New York City. The COVID-19 pandemic derailed the traditional M3 Challenge final event, where the finalist teams headed to New York City in late April to compete against each other for the “Champion” title at the offices of Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm. Instead, all judging is taking place virtually this year.

Using mathematical modeling, the students had 14 hours in late February and early March to come up with a solution to a real-world issue – transitioning to sustainable, large-scale electric trucking in the United States. The problem asked teams to create mathematical models to predict what percentage of semi-trucks will be electric in the next few years and decades, to determine the number and locations of charging stations along major U.S. trucking routes that are needed for an all-electric trucking industry, and to prioritize which routes should be developed with electric charging infrastructure. Students had to make intelligent decisions about the necessary charging infrastructure and weigh the economic and environmental implications for the communities surrounding the trucking corridors.

The problem was developed with assistance from the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) which advised about some of the big, burning questions in transitioning from diesel to electric trucks, and provided data sets for teams to use. More than 760 participating teams submitted papers detailing their recommended solutions.

“As we wrote this year's question, we were thinking about how Americans are shifting to a mindset of online purchasing, which means goods travel on our highways differently than they did in the past,” says M3 Challenge judge and lead problem developer Karen Bliss, Virginia Military Institute. “Just a few weeks later, we are living in a world where we can't go out as freely and where it's common to see store shelves empty of essential items. We are all reminded of the importance of trucking to our economy and well-being. It's great that teams were able to provide insight on how we might increase rates of truckers adopting more efficient technology and think about an industry that deserves praise at this uncertain time.”

Presented by Philadelphia-based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and sponsored by MathWorks, M3 Challenge – now in its 15th year – spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education and careers in math, science, and computing. Winning teams will be awarded a share of $100,000 in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $20,000.

In addition to White Station High School, the eight other finalist teams hail from high schools in Lincolnshire, Illinois; Columbus, Indiana; Plymouth, Minnesota; Silver Spring, Maryland; Fullerton, California; Ann Arbor, Michigan, and two teams from Osprey, Florida.

“M3 Challenge has truly instilled within these bright young minds a sense of wonder and curiosity of the mathematically-driven world around them that will propel them to think critically and reason logically throughout their lives,” said Yanli Cui, teacher at White Station High School, who coached the school’s students in preparation for the 14-hour Challenge. “This award is an incredible testimony to the belief that all students can appreciate the beauty of applied math and modeling and our obligation as educators is to create access and opportunity. We challenge our kids to rise to the expectation of having a life-long passion for the beauty of mathematics and persistence in problem-solving.”

The student members of the White Station M3 Challenge team said: "Three of our team members participated in M3 Challenge last year and had failed to finish the problem. Going in this time, we knew our goals were twofold: to complete all three parts of the problem and to eat as much food as we could during the competition. During the 14-hour period, we collectively processed more than 20,000 calories and wrote nearly 9,000 words in our paper. The hardest part of the competition was approaching obstacles such as limited data availability, having to compare unrelated characteristics, and evaluating model sensitivity. However, through extensive discussion and research, and fueled by bags of chips, we managed to simplify each of the problems into something we could computationally digest, using modeling techniques with which we were familiar to assist us. Overall, M3 Challenge was an incredibly fun experience, allowing us to gain a glimpse into what mathematicians do outside the classroom."

For more information about M3 Challenge, visit m3challenge.siam.org. To access this year’s challenge problem, visit https://m3challenge.siam.org/practice-problems/2020-challenge-problem-keep-trucking-us-big-rigs-turnover-diesel-electric.