What's happenning in Applied Maths - for Undergraduates?

International MATHEMATICAL CONTEST IN MODELLING, Feb 3rd-7th 2005,
(previously, Feb 5th-9th 2004).

The WA Branch of ANZIAM, the Australian and New Zealand 
Industrial and Applied Maths division of the Australian Mathematical Society
http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~anziam/index.html
is considering trying to organise, and train, a team from Perth for
the International Mathematical Contest in Modelling
http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/

The contest works by having teams of 3 undergraduates working
together to solve problems. It may be easier with the admin if
all the undergrads were from the one university, but we could
invent an ANZIAM(WA-undergraduates) if it works out differently.

Typical math modelling problems are up at
http://www.mathmodels.org/problems/index.cgi?query=&listall=List+All+Problems&grade=Undergraduate&source=MCMProblems&mathematics=AppliedMath+&limit=none

See also
http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/mcm/instructions.php

Individuals in the WA teams must be competent at at least one of the
mathematical software packages like Maple, Mathematica or Matlab.
If there is interest in this ANZIAM-WA (probably Nev Fowkes,
Grant Keady, Peg Foo Siew) propose to run training
sessions, using past problems as the source of training.
(This is the standard way of doing it. A decade ago I saw how friends
were doing it at University of Galway, in the home town of my
ancestors. There are East Australians participating. The USA and Chinese
usually win, but it would be nice if WA were to beat East Australian
teams. Uni of NSW was one of many getting a "meritorious" mention
in the 2003 Contest.)

Watch 
http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~anziam/index.html
(near the bottom of the page) for more details as they become
available.

Grant Keady