Cornell Math Competition in Modeling 2008

Well this past weekend was the Cornell Math Competition in Modelling to determine which teams will represent Cornell in the international competition.  This year’s problem was quite interesting and based off an xkcd comic.  For the problem we  had  to optimize the layout of the sidewalks on the Arts quad here at Cornell.

My team worked together pretty well and we came up with some interesting results.  However, we did not have enough time to include all the variables we wanted nor take data on current traffic flow.    We did get several interesting plots which can be seen in our writeup.

I look foward to finding out how many other teams competed and the ways they approached this problem.  All in all I think my team had a lot of fun with this problem.  I myself definitely liked it better  than last year’s diversity problem.