Teenagers Sacrifice Saturday for Math Challenge
A nationwide math challenge inspired nine Huntington High School students to put aside their personal affairs and spend 11 hours working in the library on a recent Saturday.
The nine Huntington teenagers competed on a pair of teams with Cole Blackburn, Steve Yeh, Olivia Stamatatos, Ekaterina Koulakova and Spencer Pashkin on squad and Samuel Latt, Cara Sorrentino, Miranda Nykolyn and Samantha Conte on the other.
Huntington teachers and Math Honor Society advisors Patricia Avelli and Monica Racz were on to keep an eye on the teenagers, but otherwise allowed them to work completely independently. “They received no input from us at all,” Mrs. Avelli said.
“Spending 11 hours in school on a Saturday isn’t the sort of thing you would expect someone to volunteer for, but we all had a lot of fun,” Mr. Pashkin said. “Working together on such an innovative, albeit difficult, challenge was rewarding and we had the great company of math teachers Mrs. Racz and Mrs. Avelli. The pizza they got us wasn't bad either!”
“Moody’s Mega Math Challenge is a mathematical modeling contest for high school juniors and seniors,” according to a website. “Through participation, students gain the experience of working in teams to tackle a real-world problem under time and resource constraints akin to those faced by industrial applied mathematicians. The Challenge is sponsored by the Moody’s Foundation and organized by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and awards $150,000 in scholarships. The M3 Challenge spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful problem-solving tool, and as a viable and exciting profession.”
The Challenge’s annual “problem topic” remains unknown until the internet-based contest gets underway and students download it. Participants work in teams of three to five students and have up to 14 hours “to gather data and information, make assumptions and devise a mathematical model to provide insight about the issue before submitting their solution via computer upload,” according to the organization’s website. The goal of the Challenge is to motivate students to pursue careers in science and math.
“It was an experience that I’ll never forget,” said Mr. Latt about the recent Challenge. “The problem we were given to solve was very convoluted, but we were able to put our brains together and submit a viable solution. It was definitely a good teamwork exercise and I’d recommend it for anyone who is up for the Challenge. Spending 11 hours in the library on a Saturday wasn’t ideal, but we made it fun and we took short breaks to chat and relax.”
More than 6,800 students and nearly 1,600 teams participated in this year’s event on the last weekend in February. The competition has spread from New York City and its surrounding communities to across the nation, including states as far away as California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii, as well as all U.S. territories and schools on US military bases in foreign countries for the children of service men and women.