Math teams’ efforts recognized in international contest

Several Sussex Technical High School students participated in the 14th annual High School Mathematical Modeling Contest sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications.

A total of 435 teams, with up to four students each, from 80 schools throughout the world, competed. All teams worked at their own schools during a designated 36-hour period between Nov. 4 and 21, 2011. Each high school team chose from two modeling problems offered and then constructed their solutions.

Sussex Tech’s junior team, consisting of A.J. Green, Matt Rosas, Lacey Perdue and Josh Mohun, received an honorable mention designation for its efforts. Sussex Tech’s senior team members Steven Sarnowski, Keegan Moore, Matthew Oldland and Ricky Bautista, were recognized as successful participants. The senior class was recruited for the team through the technical related math LDP, and three of the four juniors are in Robin Wroten’s precalculus class.

Three members of the junior team also participated in the Moody’s Mega Math Challenge on March 3. An internet-based applied math contest, the challenge takes a timely and relevant real-world problem and challenges students to come up with their best solution. The problem topic is not revealed until students log in to the challenge website the day of the contest. They are required to upload their solutions in the form of a research paper within a 14-hour time frame.

By connecting math to real issues, the contest teaches participants that with sufficient data and the application of analytical and critical-thinking skills, the power of mathematics and the objectivity of hard numbers can be used to solve almost anything. Thousands of dollars in scholarship money is available to the winners of the Moody’s Challenge. Sussex Tech’s team members, A.J. Green, Matt Rosas and Lacey Perdue, will find out the results of the contest at the end of April.

Advisers for the teams were math teachers Robin Wroten and Renee Parsley.