Glendale Students Advance MathWorks Math Modeling Finals

GLENDALE, WI —A combination of math smarts and creative thinking has added up to a top spot in a major national math competition for four Nicolet High School students.

The students – Zach Godkin, Gabe Guralnick, Savir Maskara, and Ryan Mortonson of Nicolet High School – have advanced to the finals in the popular MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Challenge organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

This year's contest drew more than 4,000 eleventh and twelfth-grade participants from across the nation. The Glendale, Wisconsin team will head to New York City on April 29 to compete against five other finalist teams at the offices of Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm.

Using mathematical modeling, the students had 14 hours in late February to come up with a solution to a real-world issue – substance abuse in the United States.

The problem asked teams to create a mathematical model to predict the spread of nicotine use due to vaping over the next 10 years and compare vaping to cigarette use, and then to build a second model to simulate the likelihood that a given individual will use a given substance, considering social influence and characteristic traits as well as characteristics of the drug itself.

Then they were asked to predict how many high school seniors will use these substances. Students were finally tasked with developing a metric to measure and rank the impact of the use of various substances. More than 875 participating teams from across the U.S. submitted papers detailing their recommended solutions.

“Participants could use simulation and programming, probability and statistics, or even algebra to model the number of students who choose to use different substances,” said problem co-writer Katie Kavanagh, Clarkson University. “These students offer a unique perspective on what factors are important to consider, particularly at that critical, influential time in their own lives.”

In addition to Nicolet High School, the five other finalist teams hail from high schools in Lincolnshire, Illinois; Nashua, New Hampshire; Rockville, Maryland; Lincroft, New Jersey; and Plymouth, Minnesota.

“I think Mathworks Math Modeling Challenge is an excellent opportunity for students to show how they are able to apply their abilities and skills - not only those developed in math classes, but in other classes and their life skills - to help solve some real-world problems,” said Mike Weidner, Mathematics Teacher at Nicolet High School who coached the school’s students in preparation for the 14-hour challenge. "Students have to rely on teamwork, technology, and their unique and creative talents to be successful."

Team member Ryan Mortonson learned a great deal about teamwork and collaboration by participating in M3 Challenge. "I think our greatest takeaways from the Challenge include trust, teamwork, and perseverance. We were only able to complete the challenge because we trusted our friends to complete their own work at a high level, allowing us to work on three separate problems simultaneously. At the same time, we learned the value of asking for help or clarification, and we worked through kinks in the process through group discussion. There were also points of frustration where we discussed quitting, so we relied on each other to keep our spirits high and our minds focused. The competition itself is valuable because it shows the value of math in the real world."