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A Lafayette team made a very strong showing in the 21st annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications.
Students worked Feb. 3-7 to come up with the best solution to a posted problem. One asked teams to develop a model showing the consequences of a massive dam failure and another required teams to propose a model to help determine the optimal number of tollbooths in a barrier-toll plaza. According to COMAP, 644 teams representing institutions from 10 countries participated.
The team of Jinjin Qian ’08 (Shanghai, China), Haotian Wu ’07(Suzhou, China), a double major in mathematics and physics, and Farhan Ahmed ’05 (Utter Pradesh, India), who is pursuing a B.S. in electrical & computer engineering and an A.B. with a major in mathematics, was designated “Meritorious Winner.” Just 85 teams, or 13 percent, earned this ranking.
“The only category above ‘Meritorious Winner’ is ‘Outstanding Winner,’ and there were only 10 teams total in that category, so this is a significant accomplishment,” says team adviser Ethan Berkove, assistant professor of mathematics.
The team of computer science major Teruhisa Haruguchi ’07 (Saitamashi, Japan) and physics majors Aydin Gerek ’07 (Istanbul, Turkey) and Ko Ko Maung ’07 (Tharkayta Yangon, Myanmar) was designated “Successful Participant.”
Earlier this school year, Lafayette’s three-student team in the 2004-05 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, described by Time magazine as “the world’s toughest math test,” finished in the top ten percent of participating schools across the country with a rank of 53.