Norton Students to Participate in Math Marathon

Moody’s Mega Math Challenge plus 14 hours to solve an open ended problem equals one challenging day for seven students this weekend.

There will be two teams from the school’s Mu Alpha Theta national honor society heading up this challenge set for Sunday, March 4. One team consists of Amanda Schleicher, Hannah Lavendier, Joe DeLorenzo, and Tyler Durocher. The second team is made up of Taryn Kitchen, Kayla Murphy, and Stephen Hynes.

“These students are working hard trying to win thousands of dollars available in scholarship money,” said Mu Alpha Theta advisor and head of the math department Mary Taylor.

According to the Challenge website, scholarship prizes total $115,000. The top six prize-winning teams receive scholarship awards ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, which are divided equally among team members and paid directly to the colleges or universities at which the winning students enroll. Semi-finalist and honorable mention winners receive team prizes of $1,500 and $1,000, respectively.

At 7 a.m. Sunday morning, the students will download an open ended, realistic, applied math-modeling problem focused on a real-world issue and will have 14 hours to submit an answer. Last year the question was in regards to the census and what changes should be made to make sure everyone in the United States was counted.

Each team has chosen one member’s house where they will spend the day. They get the question from a website using a username and password they were provided with when they were registered. Answers must be uploaded by 9 p.m. Sunday night.

Teams can use any free and publicly available resources, but they may not discuss any aspect of the problem with, or seek help from, their coach or anyone other than their teammates via any medium.

“First off, the questions are so open ended there really isn’t one correct answer,” Taylor said. “Secondly the students all sign a document stating they did all their own work without outside assistance.”

More than 5,400 students from 1,000 different high schools forming 1,193 teams are set to compete this weekend according to the Moody’s Mega Math Challenge website.

To find out more about this competition visit http://m3challenge.siam.org/.