Dear all,

The Math Modeling Contest is around the corner!

The contest is a four-day event in which three-person teams write papers using math to address real-world problems. Recent contests have had questions about traffic flow, cell phones, global warming, and sudoku.

Last year, almost 1700 teams participated from universities all over the world. A team from OSU was one of 300 to receive the second-best possible score, "Meritorious", for their paper modeling traffic circles. The nine teams with higher scores had their papers published in the journal "Undergraduate Mathematics and its Applications".

This year's contest begins at 7:00 pm on February 18 and ends at 7:00 pm on February 22. If you can spare that weekend, it's an exciting event and a great way to represent the university.

If you'd like to participate, please tell me by February 15 so that I can register the correct number of teams.

If you have any questions, ask me (mermin@math.okstate.edu or 414 MSCS), or see the contest website at http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/

-- Jeff Mermin Assistant Professor of Mathematics Oklahoma State University mermin@math.okstate.edu