Modeling Competitions: Perspectives of Student and Faculty

Modeling Competitions: Perspectives of Student and Faculty JMM Emma Regenauer and Patrice Tiffany Manhattan College Riverdale, New York January 17,2019

Manhattan College • 3600 students • Approximately 35 Math majors • Classes populated by students from the school of science and the school of engineering • Students are involved in undergraduate conferences, REUs and the Putnam Exam • BUT • No experience in team Mathematics competitions like MCM or ICM

So how did this all start? • SIMIODE weeklong seminar • Systematic Initiative for Modeling Investigations and Opportunities with Differential Equations • We bought into teaching Differential Equations from a modeling first perspective

So our first competition challenge wasSCUDEM • It was the inaugural SCUDEM • It was our inaugural attempt! Student Challenge Using Differential Equation Modeling

So as a coach: • Sept 2017: • Hardest part: Getting a team. Not an easy thing to do. • convince one student and he in turn brought in two more students. • “What are we getting involved in?” • Math major, a chemical engineer and a mechanical engineer major. Nice!!! • Three males

Learned the ropes • Local Competition –met in person • Social interactions amongst students • Social interactions amongst faculty • Faculty development – modeling first in differential equations- scenarios which are available on SIMIODE website

Still a coach • May 2018 • Hardest part: Getting a team again • One student had graduated and one was too busy in student government to join the team • Reached out to the faculty adviser of the Math Club to see if he could round up some participants. • Emma here was the first to jump in and then two more students said they were interested. • Math major, a chemical engineer and a mechanical engineer major. Same!!! • Two females and one male

Still a coach • Easiest part: • “Hands off” approach once the problems became available. • Enable them to find study rooms on campus. • Offered pizza!

Future Issues • How to get students involved? • How to better prepare students?

The next year: “of course we can do it better” • Host Tips: • Provide coffee and breakfast!!! • Establish a friendly and easy going atmosphere • Be organized and prepared for things like storms, technology difficulties, lunch etc. • Devil is in the details!

Hosting: • September 2018: • Poor timing: too soon on the back of the last one and too early in the semester. • Still hard: Getting a team: With the help of the Math Club faculty adviser we wrangled up a • Math major (returning member), a chemical engineer and a computer engineer major. • Two females and one male Same!

Hosting • The hardest part: • Judging: • Hardcopies of the solutions should be available to each judge with a scoring rubric. • Executive summaries should be anonymous • Cannot judge ones own school. • No scores should be posted. • In judging make sure everyone knows that constructive criticism is the only kind of criticism.

Hosting • Faculty Development: we included students in it! • Spread of disease on a college campus scenario. • They were already a modeling friendly audience since they were there but the idea of modeling first in DE as a form of pedagogy was new to most.

Coaching or Hosting • The best part: • Presentations: • Students get the opportunity to present their work • Students get the opportunity to see other students present different solution.

All in all a great experience from the coach and host perspective

A student perspective:

Spring 2018 • Joined my first team ever! • First time modeling ever, never saw in class or took a modeling class before • Other members of team: chemical engineer and mechanical engineer • Different perspectives on how to approach the problem

Good: multiple ways to model the problem with different backgrounds • Challenging: sometimes hard to translate ideas when coming from different backgrounds • Benefits of working in a group: Spring 2018, very helpful since I had never seen modeling before • Negatives of working in a group: Spring 2018, hard to make some of the decisions as a group

Fall 2018 • A new team with new members, chemical and computer engineers • Different perspectives on how to approach the problem • Good: More cohesive group, all had seen modeling before • Challenging: Different backgrounds, again hard to translate ideas • Benefits of group: Many different perspectives helped us form a lot of ways to possibly solve the problem • Negatives of group: Too many ways to solve the problem, hard to make decisions and to follow one path

Solution to Snakes in the Long-Run • Choosing the problem: Given the choice of 3 different problems to solve, we worked through the beginning steps of all 3, found snakes the easiest • The problem asked about the long-run effect on snake populations given a changing climate • From the problem statement: low temperature favors females, high temperature favors males • We determined for the original to use a related rates differential equation

Twist to Snakes in the Long Run • On the day of competition, students are given a twist to the original problem and given approximately two hours to come up with a solution using their original solution • Twist: How will evolution effect the population over a longer period of time? • Analyzing graphically, we used a step function to create a solution to the twist

Reaction to Other Presentations • One group used the logistic growth differential equation model, and used matlab to interpret their results • Another group also used the logistic growth model, but they included probability and statistics in their solution • Very interesting to see how others interpreted the question and came up with solutions

Unexpected Benefits • Summer 2018: Worked behind the scenes with SIMIODE • Saw how modeling scenarios were created by professors • Learned from professors what types of models are constructed by differential equations • Got to present a scenario to large group of professors, along with a professor • Winter 2019: Presenting about my experience at this conference

What I Learned • Time management • How to work with people not just in my major, how to communicate ideas • Differential Equations are not just problems that need to be integrated, they have applications in the real-world

Modeling Competitions: Perspectives of Student and Faculty