5 Houston students beat out thousands of students nationwide in prestigious international math competition
St. John's Math team beats out thousands at international competition
FOX 26 Reporter Randy Wallace explains what one group of students did that's attracting big attention.
HOUSTON - "This is not go take a math test and get a number of answers right and win a competition, said Dwight Raulston Director of curriculum at St John's School. "This is taking that knowledge to the next level and actually using it."
Some teens from St John's School did something a lot of adults couldn't do. Spend 14 hours focused on finding a solution to a real-world question.
Their question? The predicted growth of E-bike use and its impact on society.
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"Hundreds of teams are getting the exact same problem, and we need a way to distinguish ourselves from the other teams," said team member Benjamin Lu.
Students all over the country and the UK competed in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge. They all had the same 14-hour deadline.
"We were all sitting in my living room at my house, bunch of people on the couch. I had my computer, we brought a white board from school, a lot of food, a lot of fun," said team member Addison Spiegel.
"It didn't feel like 14 hours," said team member Ananya Das. "Some of us say it felt like a really long time. To me, it went really fast."
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There must have been times when team members didn't agree.
"Especially as the competition drew to a close," said team member Oliver Lin. "The hours were getting long, some people were getting kind of tired, and more difficult to work with. I will say I myself may have been one of them."
Were there moments when the teens wanted to smack each other?
"For sure, we were literally trapped in one room the entire time for 14 hours, and we were sitting there working the entire time," said team member Caden Juang. "I can definitely say that tensions did get very high."
"I think I learned a lot about myself, and working with other people through this long competition," Spiegel said.
"That's the nature of the beast," said Raulston. "If you want a problem solved, you get really good people together, you put them in the same room, and you don't let them come out for awhile."
The St. John's team is one of the top 16 teams in the nation. This Sunday, they will compete in the finals in New York.
"It was insane we actually found out at our prom," Das said. "We literally screamed. We took a photo right then, it made prom so much better."