MCM team Viet Dao, Zachary Brown, and Charlie Fossey flanked by MCS-358 instructors Marian Frazier and Tom LoFaro
Each year in early February the Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) conducts the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM), “an international contest for high school students and college undergraduates. It challenges teams of students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems.” This year’s team from Gustavus Adolphus College with members Zachary Brown, Viet Dao, and Charlie Fossey earned a “Meritorious Winner” designation with their submission “Measuring the Evolution and Influence in Society’s Information Networks using the Logistic Equation.”
By earning the “Meritorious Winner” designation Zach, Viet, and Charlie placed in the top 20% of the 5025 teams that competed in the 2016 MCM. Of the 864 teams who completed the same problem as them, they were one of the top 6 U.S. teams and the only one of these from a liberal arts institution.
The team was coached by Marian Frazier and Tom LoFaro of the Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Department. All three were students in MCS-358, Mathematical Model Building, this past January which was team taught by Professors Frazier and LoFaro.
For more information on the Mathematical Contest in Modeling visit http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/