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UD Students Succeed in MCM
Every year, the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications sponsors a Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). Teams of three undergraduates from universities all over the world tackle an open mathematical modeling problem during a four-day period. This year 599 teams from around the world competed.
This year, the team from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Delaware earned a "meritorious" ranking, placing it in the top 11% of competitors worldwide. This marks the second year in a row that a departmental team has earned such a high ranking. Last year, two teams from UD entered the 2003 contest and earned meritorious and honorable mention ratings.
This year's team consisted of Lauren Rossi, a senior in math, Kathleen Servis, a junior in math, and Sumanth Swaminathan, a junior in chemical engineering. The team advisor was Lou Rossi, an assistant professor in the Department of Math Sciences.
Typically, problems are developed by practitioners in government, industry or academia. Several of the past problems have evolved into rich modules for student projects and research. Once the contest begins the teams must operate without input from others, so participants must rely upon their own wits and their teammates. The results of their work are submitted as a self-contained report which is judged by a panel of mathematicians and expert practitioners. Outstanding papers are published in the UMAP journal. Many of the problems posed in the contest have enjoyed considerable attention from students and faculty alike after the contest.
For those who are curious, the problem chosen by this year's UDel team was as follows.
PROBLEM A: Are Fingerprints Unique?
It is a commonplace belief that the thumbprint of every human who has ever lived is different. Develop and analyze a model that will allow you to assess the probability that this is true. Compare the odds (that you found in this problem) of misidentification by fingerprint evidence against the odds of misidentification by DNA evidence.
A detailed report on the results from this year's contest can be found at
Further information about the UD team's experience may be obtained by contacting Dr. Rossi directly at
rossi@math.udel.edu. For more details on the competition and this year's problems, please visit the COMAP site
© 2004, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Last Updated:
April 13, 2004
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