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Local students advance in national competition

Team of five from Academy for Science and Design place in mathematics challenge

By Grace Pecci - Staff Writer | Apr 2, 2019

Courtesy photo From left, coach Karen Legault, and five Academy for Science and Design students, Nathan Yeung, Denver Blake, Ian Coolidge, Frederick Lee and Daniel Bujno, celebrate the accomplishment of placing as one of the top six finalists across the country in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge. The students are tasked to apply mathematics to societal issues. This year’s topic was substance use and abuse.

NASHUA – A team of five students from the Academy for Science and Design earned a place in the top six finalists of the national MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge.

As part of the competition, the students, Nathan Yeung, Andrew Blake, Ian Coolidge, Frederick Lee and Daniel Bujno, were tasked with applying mathematics to real-life issues faced by society.

The 2019 Challenge was titled: One is too many and a thousand not enough: Substance Use and Abuse.

As noted under the description of the challenge, “Substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and narcotics can affect the physical and mental health of users. The consequences of substance abuse, both financial (health care, the criminal justice system, workplace productivity, etc.) and non-financial (divorce, domestic abuse, etc.), ripple through society and affect more than just the user. The effects of substance abuse on individuals and society have come to the forefront recently as opioid addiction has become prominent.”

Students faced three challenges. Students were first challenged to build a mathematical model that predicts the spread of nicotine use due to vaping during the next 10 years. They had to analyze this growth compared to the use of cigarettes. In the second part of the challenge, students had to create a model that simulates the likelihood that a particular person will use a certain substance. For this, students also had to consider social influence and characteristic traits. Students had to demonstrate how their model works by predicting how many students in a class of 300 high school seniors would use nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, and prescribed opioids.

Part three of the challenge required students to develop a metric for the impact of substance use.

The students had 14 hours to complete their work. The 2019 challenge weekend took place from 8 a.m. March 1 to 8 a.m. March 4. The students did not find out what the challenge problem was until they downloaded it during weekend.

As soon as the problem was downloaded, the team’s 14-hour clock started and it could not be paused. They were also able to work from a location of their choice and were able to use any free and public resources. They could not, however, discuss any aspect of the problem with anyone other than their teammates.

On March 18, students discovered they their proposed solution was one of 178 selected to move into the second round out of 877 submitted. Then, on March 23, the students were notified that they were one of six finalists.

As they advance into the third part of judging, they will be presenting their papers on April 29 at the event host’s office in New York City. The team’s travel expenses are being paid by MathWorks. In addition, because the students placed as one of the top six overall teams, they are guaranteed one of the top six scholarship prizes, which range from $5,000 to $20,000 per team.

Students are up against high schools from Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Maryland and Minnesota in the final competition.

Team coach Karen Legault stated, “Watching our team both prepare for and participate in the M3 Challenge this year was tremendously rewarding to me. Seeing these students work so intensely on a real-world problem was truly awe-inspiring.”

Coolidge stated, “One thing that stood out to us about the challenge was the opportunity to utilize skills other than just mathematics in our solution. In addition to creating our mathematical models, our team also utilized research skills to find accurate and relevant data, and computer science and programming to develop a dynamic simulation to one question. The interdisciplinary nature of the challenge is another reason why it can help develop skills that are useful in real careers, even outside of mathematics.”

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