UWG News Item
Contact: UWG Public Relations Office
Phone (678) 839-6464, FAX (678) 839-6645
ucm@westga.edu
Students participate in Math Modeling Contest
April 6, 2006
CARROLLTON, GA - University of West Georgia students placed in the top half of contestants in the international Mathematical Contest in Modeling/ Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM). The event, which continues for 96 hours nonstop, is an online contest with 900 teams from around the world competing for top honors.
Two UWG teams finished in the 18th and 48th percentile against teams from such top educational institutions as M.I.T., Duke, Rice, Harvard and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Three UWG students won a Meritorious Award for placing in the 18th percentile: Andrea Chaney of Carrollton, Michael Berglund of Gainesville and Adam Steiner of Rincon. Team members Ben Bales of Chatsworth, Brett Maddox of Dallas and Seth McKelvey of Douglasville received Honorable Mention for placing in the 48th percentile.
The MCM/ICM is an annual competition for undergraduate students who work in teams of three on a real-world problem in applied mathematics. Teams from China, Finland, Great Britian, North and South Korea, Ireland and many other countries competed in the event.
Students must develop a mathematical model to a proposed problem, use this model to form an approach to the problem and write a formal paper describing their results. They may use computers, books and the Internet but cannot receive help from anyone outside the team.
This year’s math problems centered on positioning irrigation systems using geometry; analyzing wheelchair access in airports using discrete mathematics and probability and statistics; and reporting trade offs in fighting HIV Aids using algebra statistics.
For more information, call the Department of Mathematics at 678-839-6489.
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