Department Of Mathematics, Kansas State University
| April 2005 : | K-State Students are 8th in the world in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling |
| A team of Kansas State University students placed 8th in the world in the
Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
A total of 869 teams competed including two teams from K-State. Each team of three students had to choose one of two different mathematical modeling problems and then work together at their institution to solve the problem. One problem was about flood planning, and the other was about tollbooths. The K-State team consisting of Asma Al-Rawi and Jonathan Whitmer, Manhattan, and Eli Parke, Hays, was designated a Meritorious Winner, and only 7 teams in the world did better than them on the tollbooths problem. Al-Rawi, Parke, and Whitmer designed a model to determine the optimal number of tollbooths to deploy in a barrier-free tollplaza on a heavily-traveled multi-lane divided highway. The definition of "optimal" was up to them to decide. They also had to determine under what conditions their solution was more or less effective than the current practice of providing a much larger number of tollbooths than the number of travel lanes entering the tollplaza. The K-State team consisting of Jeffrey Amos, Olathe; Julia Galstad, Wichita; and Michael Higgins, Manhattan also solved the tollbooth problem and was designated a Successful Participant. |