Mathematical Contest in Modeling 2003

Time-line:

Oct 31, 2002: Organizational meeting; 5:15pm, 205 Malott Hall.

Nov 6, 2002: Preparation session; 5:15pm, 205 Malott Hall.

Nov 13, 2002: Preparation session; 5:15pm, 205 Malott Hall.

Nov 20, 2002: Mock MCM starts; 5:15pm, 205 Malott Hall. (Download problems in PDF or in Postscript.)

Nov 27, 2002: Mock MCM ends; 5:15pm, 205 Malott Hall.

Jan 23, 2003: Final pre-MCM meeting (required for the participants); 5pm, 205 Malott Hall.

Feb 6-10, 2003: The Mathematical Contest in Modeling 2003.

Short summary: MCM is an international competition, in which a team of three undergraduates chooses one of two open-ended ("real-world") problems, builds a mathematical model, obtains a solution based on it, and writes a detailed paper (proving the feasibility of the team's model and solution) - all this in the space of less than 4 days!
You can: brainstorm with your two teammates, use any reference materials either printed or on the web, write your own software or utilize publicly available to validate your model.
You cannot: consult with anyone besides your teammates, submit your solutions after the deadline, or remain bored in the process.

Get a glimpse of what Applied Mathematicians might do outside of Academia!
The problems are taken from all fields of science, engineering, and industry.
Recent problems included:

• estimating the maximum "safe" number of people for a given type of public facilities;
• studying hunting strategies for velociraptor dinosaurs based on fossil data;
• comparing various grading policies for fighting the "grade inflation";
• providing the guidelines for selecting the design of bicycle wheels to optimize the performance on a given track;
• considering the effects of different airline overbooking strategies on the overall profitability.

• MCM is not so much about what you already know , but more about what you can learn quickly in the new application area.
• MCM is an international contest: last year 522 teams participated representing 282 institutions from 11 countries.
• We are hoping to have multiple teams representing Cornell in 2003 (February 6-10, 2003).
• Several preparation sessions will be held for the potential participants before the end of this semester.

Interested, puzzled, or simply curious?

Send your questions to Alex Vladimirsky (vlad@math.cornell.edu), and/or come to one of the preparation sessions.

Organized by:

Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP).

Sponsored by:

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS),

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM),

Mathematical Association of America (MAA).

Some other MCM pages :

University of Colorado at Boulder,

University of Puget Sound,

University of Washington,

Eastern Oregon University,

Grinnell College.