$65,000 in scholarship prizes up for grabs

More students eligible to participate in Moody's Mega Math Challenge

In 2008, students in the Boston and Philadelphia regions and surrounding areas will join New York City metropolitan students to participate in Moody’s Mega Math Challenge. Up for grabs is $65,000 in scholarship prizes. Funded by The Moody’s Foundation, the competition was expanded due to the tremendous response from New York City-area high schools during the first two years.

Support from educators in the New York City region has been encouraging. “The M3 Challenge and its provocative questions engage students to think creatively, work efficiently in teams, create econometric models, and create solutions that can better society,” said Danny Jaye, Principal, Bergen County Academies, in Hackensack, New Jersey. “It was clearly one of the academic highlights of their year!”

The competition has grown to include more than 60 counties, up from 19 in the past two years. In 2008, it will reach more than 17,000 teachers and tens of thousands of high school juniors and seniors in the eligible areas. The Moody’s Foundation and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), which organizes the competition, are looking forward to eager participation from teachers, educators, and students in the new areas.

“Moody’s Mega Math Challenge is different from other contests – there is no test site, no long list of formulas and calculations, and no teacher or supervisor interaction with the students as they participate,” said Jim Cocoros, a teacher from Stuyvesant High School, in New York City. “This is a taste of reality – students download the problem early in the morning and are expected to research, analyze, summarize, solve, and justify by that night. I am pleased to see math being highlighted as a relevant and valuable tool outside the classroom.”

The goal of the Challenge is to encourage high school students to pursue math-related studies and careers. Students are required to solve a challenging applied math-modeling problem based on real world issues. The 2006 problem dealt with ensuring the long-term viability of social security and the 2007 problem required students to try to beat the stock market – by using applied math techniques. The 2008 problem will be revealed to participating teams on Challenge weekend, March 8 and 9.

###

To see a list of eligible counties, participating teams from previous years and for more information about Moody’s Mega Math Challenge, visit http://m3challenge.siam.org/.

About the Sponsor

The Moody's Foundation is a charitable foundation established by Moody's Corporation. Moody's is an essential component of the global capital markets. It provides credit ratings, research, tools and analysis that help to protect the integrity of credit. Moody's Corporation (NYSE: MCO) is the parent company of Moody's Investors Service, which provides credit ratings and research covering debt instruments and securities; Moody's KMV, a provider of quantitative credit analysis tools; Moody's Economy.com, which provides economic research and data services, and Moody's Wall Street Analytics, a provider of software tools and analysis for the structured finance industry. The corporation, which reported revenue of $2 billion in 2006, employs approximately 3,400 people worldwide and maintains a presence in 27 countries. Further information is available at www.philanthropy.moodys.com.

About the Organizer

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, is an international society of over 11,000 individual members. These include applied and computational mathematicians and computer scientists, as well as other scientists and engineers. Members are researchers, educators, students, and practitioners from 85 countries in industry, government, laboratories, and academia. The Society, which also includes more than 500 academic and corporate institutional members, serves and advances the disciplines of applied mathematics and computational science by publishing a variety of books and prestigious peer-reviewed research journals, by conducting conferences, and by hosting activity groups in various areas of mathematics. SIAM provides many opportunities for students including regional sections and student chapters. Further information is available at www.siam.org.