Lincroft Students Place Second in
Prestigious International Math Competition
A global pandemic didn’t stop a group of High Technology High
School students from coming together to participate in an international
math competition. A combination of math smarts and
creative thinking has added up to a top spot for the team, whose work
was selected as one of the best solutions to the problem of how to make
internet access available to everyone.
The students – Adithya Balachandran, Lasya Balachandran, David
Chang, Alexander Postovskiy and Hazem Zaky of Lincroft-based High Tech-
(M3) Challenge, a unique competition that drew more than 2,400 11th
and 12th graders in the U.S. and sixth form students in the U.K. this year.
They ultimately placed second and split a $17,000 scholarship prize.
Using mathematical modeling, students had 14 consecutive
hours in late February and early March to come up with a solution to
a real-world issue: defeating the digital divide to make internet accessible
to all. The M3 Challenge problem asked teams to create a model
to predict what internet connectivity will cost over the next decade, how
minimum required bandwidth should be determined, and an optimal
way to distribute cellular nodes in a region to maximize access. A total of
535 teams submitted papers detailing their recommendations.
“This year's topic touches on several relevant issues we are facing
as a global community,” said Karen Bliss, M3 Challenge director of
judging and lead problem developer. “One is the social justice aspect of
internet access. While this has been a problem for years, the pandemic
has highlighted the reality of the digital divide: those who don't have
to access to education and the ability to work from home, among many
other things.”
optic, cell phones, public Wi-Fi), it's not obvious how to best solve this
14 MAY 2021 | TheJournalNJ.com
problem. Bliss said, “We asked students to think about how needs vary
from person to person and how to best get high-speed internet to rural,
suburban and urban areas. While there's no one mathematical approach
that is the right way to answer these questions, we look forward
to seeing how the students used mathematical modeling to reach an
answer and explain how what they value shows up in their models.”
Now in its 16th year, M3 Challenge is a program of Philadelphia
based Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and is sponsored
by MathWorks. It spotlights applied mathematics as a powerful
problem-solving tool and motivates students to consider further education
and careers in applied math, computational and data sciences, and
technical computing. Winning teams will be awarded a share of $125,000
in scholarships, with the champion team receiving $22,500 in 2021.
teams hailed from high schools in Johns Creek, Georgia; Lincolnshire, Illinois
(two teams); Livingston, New Jersey; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Balachandran found M3 Challenge to be unique among other
math competitions.
"M3 Challenge provides a wonderful opportunity to work as a team
to formulate and apply mathematical models in intractable real-world
situations,” he said. “Through this opportunity, we were able to experience
the power of analytical thinking and mathematical problem solving
to gain insights that help address a wide range of complex questions.
The rewarding 14-hour experience also showed us how we could
apply mathematical modeling to predict the effectiveness of solutions
to our most pressing global challenges."
For the second year running, all presentations and judging took
place virtually instead of at an all-day, in-person event in New York City
due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For more information, visit m3challenge.siam.org.
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