IM2C finalists from Central High School are Wentworth Gumbs, Emily Daly, Khaleese Figaro, Brianna Swanston, Kervin Mathurin, Yad Bass and Giovane Barnes. Team advisors are Vihba Bansal and Victor Barnes.
Two teams from the St. Croix Central High School recently won the regional round for the U.S. Virgin Islands in the International Mathematics Modeling Challenge 2017 (IM2C) following five days of competition. The teams gained qualifications by becoming winners in the USVI preliminary round of competition, which was open to high school teams across the territory. The USVI is only allotted two spaces in the finals of the IM2C competition. The International Mathematics Modeling Challenge is one of a few prestigious competitions in academia that focuses on the mathematical modeling to study realistic problems.
Modeling competitions are not based on a set of predetermined solutions, but rather, it is expected that the student participants will interpret the given problem scenario and generate their solution based on mathematical modeling they apply. In their solution, the students justify the approach taken to arrive at their solution.
Mathematics modeling is not easily defined. It can best be described as understanding a real-world problem enough so that one could, by using alignments, parallels and similarities with some area in mathematics, transform the problem to a mathematical one and then use mathematics to try to find a solution to the original problem. In the IM2C competition, there are no “correct” or “wrong” answers; rather, what becomes most important is the layout of how the solution is derived.
The International Mathematics Modeling Challenge was introduced in the territory this school year by Dr. Celil Ekici, assistant professor of mathematics at UVI and research director of the VI Institute for STEM Education Research & Practice (VI ISERP). In this inaugural entry to the IM2C, the challengers from the St. Croix Central High School are hoping to create their solution that would stand out among solutions created by finalists from other countries.
