Source: School of Mathematics and Computational Science
Written by: Huang Danjie
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The results of 2016 Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM/ICM) have been announced recently. Three teams of Sun Yat-sen University stood out from the competition on Problem F, and entered the finals. The team — comprised of SYSU seniors Lan Ruoyu, Feng Wenbo and Zheng Qi, from School of Atmospheric Sciences, Lingnan College, and School of Data and Computer Science respectively — was awarded the Outstanding Winner, and INFORMS Award, the only highest honor designated by INFORMS — the largest society in the world for professionals in the field of operations research (OR), management science (MS), and analytics. The other two teams, comprised of players from School of Physics and School of Data and Computer Science respectively, were named Finalist. SYSU has been named Finalist 7 times in a row since 2010, and mounted to the highest prize for the first time in this competition.

The 2016 MCM/ICM attracted 12,446 teams with nearly forty thousand competitors from around the world, including the University of California (Berkeley), University of Washington, University of Cambridge, Peking University, and Tsinghua University, etc. In Sun Yat-sen University, 885 students of 296 teams from more than 20 schools took part in this contest. Besides the above awards, they won 36 Meritorious Winners and 123 Honorable Mentions, the winning rate reached 55%. The number of participants, prizes and beneficiaries have achieved the highest level.

In the paper of Outstanding Winner, the players combined the cluster analysis with gravity model, constructed a refugee migration model and built a feedback system using network analysis methodology and Cellular automaton to make precise simulation aiming to help figure out a set of efficient policies. Lan Ruoyu believes, in addition to the algorithm, model, framework and language are the keys to the competition, and teamwork is most important.

MCM/ICM is a world-wide contest organized by COMAP, SIAM and NSA with over 30 years’ history. It is regarded as the origin of math modeling contest and the most influential one. Contestants are required to offer a solution paper to one of the problems within 96 hours. The paper should involve the analysis to problem, feasibility, robustness and effect of the model with concise writing.