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UB team wins grueling, 96-hour math contest
By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
Contributing Editor
Most recent college graduates would love to forget the experience of “cramming” before a big exam, but two UB graduates who spent 96 hours last semester doing just that have received multiple awards in the international 2008 Mathematical Contest in Modeling, in which 1,162 teams competed from universities around the world.
The UB team consisting of Amy Evans and Tracy Stepien was one of nine to be awarded an Outstanding Winner designation, placing in the top 1 percent of all papers submitted.
It was the first time that UB had entered a team in the 24-year-old contest. Previous winners were from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-Berkeley, among many other institutions.
In addition to the Outstanding Winners award, the UB students also were awarded the Ben Fusaro Award, named for the founder of the contest. They also won the SIAM prize given by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, awarded to one outstanding winner for “noteworthy originality and creativity in their modeling effort.”
John Ringland, professor of mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences, was the team’s faculty advisor. An additional UB team earned an honorable mention for its entry in the contest; team members were Zachary Marzec, Quinessence Anx and Joseph Zennamo.
The intense international contest is sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications. It requires undergraduate mathematics students to solve a complex, mathematical modeling problem within 96 hours.
During those 96 hours, students must research the literature on the problem, come up with a mathematical model, use computer programs to generate results from their model, draw conclusions and write a cogent paper describing their methods and results.
The UB students were asked to develop a model that described how the coast of Florida would be affected by the melting of the polar ice cap due to predicted increases in global temperatures. The students were required to model changes in the Florida coastline every decade for the next 50 years, with particular attention to large, metropolitan areas.
“The hardest part about competing in the contest was staying focused and not getting sick,” recalls Stepien. “There is a lot of work that needs to be done in 96 hours and your ability to think very clearly deteriorates throughout the contest.”
As a result of their contest win, the UB students are headed to the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), being held in July in San Diego, where they will present their paper and attend workshops. SIAM is the major professional organization of applied mathematicians.
Stepien and Edwards said their interest in “applied” mathematics—in which mathematical techniques are used to solve problems in other scientific disciplines—was stoked, in part, by such UB courses as “Fundamentals of Applied Mathematics I and II,” taught by Brian Spencer, professor of mathematics, as well as “Introduction to Numerical Analysis,” taught by Ringland.
Stepien, for example, completed undergraduate theses in mathematical physiology, analyzing and developing a mathematical model of renal dynamics under the guidance of E. Bruce Pitman, professor of mathematics and associate dean for research and sponsored programs, CAS.
“What also helped in our success was that Tracy and I have worked together in the past in both the mathematics and music departments and have known each other since freshman year,” said Evans. “We work well together, and our strengths and weaknesses balance each other.”