This year’s problems concerned:

A) Gerrymandering (develop a model for “fairly” and “simply” determining congressional districts); B) airplane seating (devise and compare procedures for boarding and de-boarding planes of varying sizes from 85 to 800 passengers); and C) kidney exchange (science, management and policy issues for organ transplantation networks). Team members may not seek help from or discuss the problem with their advisor or anyone else, except other members of the same team. Input of any form from anyone other than student team members is strictly forbidden.

The MCM allows teams to choose A) or B), while problem C) defines the ICM. This year the MCM had a record 949 entries worldwide, with 14 entries earning outstanding. The meritorious designation was awarded to 122 papers comprising the top 13 percent of the entries. Notably, this year HMC had three out of four MCM teams in this elite class. The following HMC teams earned meritorious:

Problem A: Natalie Durgin '09, Michael Hansen '07 and Herbie Huff '07

Problem A: David Gross '08, Will Tipton '08 and Reuben Villagomez '08

Problem B: Martin Hunt '08, Kenji Kozai '08 and George Tucker '08

Please join us in congratulating these skillful Mudders who dedicated their time, enthusiasm and talents to compete in this year’s modeling competition.

Additional information about the MCM/ICM can be found at: http://comap-math.com/mcm/

Story by Jon Jacobsen, Howard and Iris Critchell Assistant Professor of Mathematics and MCM/ICM coordinator