MCM and ICM Problems:
2011 A - Snowboard Course
Determine the shape of a snowboard course (currently known as a “halfpipe”) to maximize the production of “vertical air” by a skilled snowboarder.
"Vertical air" is the maximum vertical distance above the edge of the halfpipe.
Tailor the shape to optimize other possible requirements, such as maximum twist in the air.
What tradeoffs may be required to develop a “practical” course?
2011 B - Repeater Coordination
The VHF radio spectrum involves line-of-sight transmission and reception. This limitation can be overcome by “repeaters,” which pick up weak signals, amplify them, and retransmit them on a different frequency. Thus, using a repeater, low-power users (such as mobile stations) can communicate with one another in situations where direct user-to-user contact would not be possible. However, repeaters can interfere with one another unless they are far enough apart or transmit on sufficiently separated frequencies.
In addition to geographical separation, the “continuous tone-coded squelch system” (CTCSS), sometimes nicknamed “private line” (PL), technology can be used to mitigate interference problems. This system associates to each repeater a separate subaudible tone that is transmitted by all users who wish to communicate through that repeater. The repeater responds only to received signals with its specific PL tone. With this system, two nearby repeaters can share the same frequency pair (for receive and transmit); so more repeaters (and hence more users) can be accommodated in a particular area.
For a circular flat area of radius 40 miles radius, determine the minimum number of repeaters necessary to accommodate 1,000 simultaneous users. Assume that the spectrum available is 145 to 148 MHz, the transmitter frequency in a repeater is either 600 kHz above or 600 kHz below the receiver frequency, and there are 54 different PL tones available.
How does your solution change if there are 10,000 users?
Discuss the case where there might be defects in line-of-sight propagation caused by mountainous areas.
2011 C - How environmentally and economically sound are electric vehicles? Is their widespread use feasible and practical?
Your ICM submission should consist of a 1 page Summary Sheet and a 20 page report/solution for a total of 21 pages.
2010 A - The Sweet Spot
Explain the “sweet spot” on a baseball bat.
Every hitter knows that there is a spot on the fat part of a baseball bat where maximum power is transferred to the ball when hit. Why isn’t this spot at the end of the bat? A simple explanation based on torque might seem to identify the end of the bat as the sweet spot, but this is known to be empirically incorrect. Develop a model that helps explain this empirical finding.
Some players believe that “corking” a bat (hollowing out a cylinder in the head of the bat and filling it with cork or rubber, then replacing a wood cap) enhances the “sweet spot” effect. Augment your model to confirm or deny this effect. Does this explain why Major League Baseball prohibits “corking”?
Does the material out of which the bat is constructed matter? That is, does this model predict different behavior for wood (usually ash) or metal (usually aluminum) bats? Is this why Major League Baseball prohibits metal bats?
2009 B - Criminology
In 1981 Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of thirteen murders and subjecting a number of other people to vicious attacks. One of the methods used to narrow the search for Mr. Sutcliffe was to find a “center of mass” of the locations of the attacks. In the end, the suspect happened to live in the same town predicted by this technique. Since that time, a number of more sophisticated techniques have been developed to determine the “geographical profile” of a suspected serial criminal based on the locations of the crimes.
Your team has been asked by a local police agency to develop a method to aid in their investigations of serial criminals. The approach that you develop should make use of at least two different schemes to generate a geographical profile. You should develop a technique to combine the results of the different schemes and generate a useful prediction for law enforcement officers. The prediction should provide some kind of estimate or guidance about possible locations of the next crime based on the time and locations of the past crime scenes. If you make use of any other evidence in your estimate, you must provide specific details about how you incorporate the extra information. Your method should also provide some kind of estimate about how reliable the estimate will be in a given situation, including appropriate warnings.
In addition to the required one-page summary, your report should include an additional two-page executive summary. The executive summary should provide a broad overview of the potential issues. It should provide an overview of your approach and describe situations when it is an appropriate tool and situations in which it is not an appropriate tool. The executive summary will be read by a chief of police and should include technical details appropriate to the intended audience.
2010 C - The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch
Your ICM submission should consist of a 1 page Summary Sheet and a 10 page report/solution for a total of 11 pages.
2009 A - Designing a Traffic Circle
Many cities and communities have traffic circles—from large ones with many lanes in the circle (such as at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the Victory Monument in Bangkok) to small ones with one or two lanes in the circle. Some of these traffic circles position a stop sign or a yield sign on every incoming road that gives priority to traffic already in the circle; some position a yield sign in the circle at each incoming road to give priority to incoming traffic; and some position a traffic light on each incoming road (with no right turn allowed on a red light). Other designs may also be possible.
The goal of this problem is to use a model to determine how best to control traffic flow in, around, and out of a circle. State clearly the objective(s) you use in your model for making the optimal choice as well as the factors that affect this choice. Include a Technical Summary of not more than two double-spaced pages that explains to a Traffic Engineer how to use your model to help choose the appropriate flow-control method for any specific traffic circle. That is, summarize the conditions under which each type of traffic-control method should be used. When traffic lights are recommended, explain a method for determining how many seconds each light should remain green (which may vary according to the time of day and other factors). Illustrate how your model works with specific examples.
2009 B - Energy and the Cell Phone
This question involves the “energy” consequences of the cell phone revolution. Cell phone usage is mushrooming, and many people are using cell phones and giving up their landline telephones. What is the consequence of this in terms of electricity use? Every cell phone comes with a battery and a recharger.
Requirement 1
Consider the current US, a country of about 300 million people. Estimate from available data the number H of households, with m members each, that in the past were serviced by landlines. Now, suppose that all the landlines are replaced by cell phones; that is, each of the m members of the household has a cell phone. Model the consequences of this change for electricity utilization in the current US, both during the transition and during the steady state. The analysis should take into account the need for charging the batteries of the cell phones, as well as the fact that cell phones do not last as long as landline phones (for example, the cell phones get lost and break).
Requirement 2
Consider a second “Pseudo US”—a country of about 300 million people with about the same economic status as the current US. However, this emerging country has neither landlines nor cell phones. What is the optimal way of providing phone service to this country from an energy perspective? Of course, cell phones have many social consequences and uses that landline phones do not allow. A discussion of the broad and hidden consequences of having only landlines, only cell phones, or a mixture of the two is welcomed.
Requirement 3
Cell phones periodically need to be recharged. However, many people always keep their recharger plugged in. Additionally, many people charge their phones every night, whether they need to be recharged or not. Model the energy costs of this wasteful practice for a Pseudo US based upon your answer to Requirement 2. Assume that the Pseudo US supplies electricity from oil. Interpret your results in terms of barrels of oil.
Requirement 4
Estimates vary on the amount of energy that is used by various recharger types (TV, DVR, computer peripherals, and so forth) when left plugged in but not charging the device. Use accurate data to model the energy wasted by the current US in terms of barrels of oil per day.
Requirement 5
Now consider population and economic growth over the next 50 years. How might a typical Pseudo US grow? For each 10 years for the next 50 years, predict the energy needs for providing phone service based upon your analysis in the first three requirements. Again, assume electricity is provided from oil. Interpret your predictions in term of barrels of oil.
2009 C - Creating Food Systems: Re-Balancing Human-Influenced Ecosystems
BackgroundLess than 1% of the ocean floor is covered by coral. Yet, 25% of the ocean’s biodiversity is supported in these areas. Thus, conservationists are concerned when coral disappears, since the biodiversity of the region disappears shortly thereafter.
Consider an area in the Philippines located in a narrow channel between Luzon Island and Santiago Island in Bolinao, Pangasinan, that used to be filled with coral reef and supported a wide range of species (Figure 1). The once plentiful biodiversity of the area has been dramatically reduced with the introduction of commercial milkfish (Chanos chanos) farming in the mid 1990’s. It's now mostly muddy bottom, the once living corals are long since buried, and there are few wild fish remaining due to over fishing and loss of habitat. While it is important to provide enough food for the human inhabitants of the area, it is equally important to find innovative ways of doing so that allow the natural ecosystem to continue thriving; that is, establishing a desirable polyculture system that could replace the current milkfish monoculture. The ultimate goal is to develop a set of aquaculture practices that would not only support the human inhabitants financially and nutritionally, but simultaneously improve the local water quality to a point where reef- building corals could recolonize the ocean floor and co-exist with the farms.
A desirable polyculture is a scenario where multiple economically valuable species are farmed together and the waste of one species is the food for another. For example, the waste of a fin-fish can be eaten by filter feeders and excess nutrients from both fish and filter feeders can be absorbed by algae which can also be sold, either as food or commercially useful by-products. Not only does this reduce the amount of nutrient input from the fish farming into the surrounding waters, it also increases the amount of profit a farmer can make by using the fish waste to generate a greater quantity of usable products (mussels, seaweed, etc.)
For modeling purposes, the primary animal organisms involved in these biodiverse environments can be partitioned into predatory fish (phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata); herbivorous fish (phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata); molluscs (such as mussels, oysters, clams, snails, etc., phylum Mollusca); crustaceans (such as crabs, lobsters, barnacles, shrimp, etc., phylum Arthropoda, subphylum Crustacea); echinoderms (such as star fish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, etc.; phylum Echinodermata); and algae. By feeding types, there are primary producers (photosynthesizers—these can be single cell phytoplankton, cyanobacteria, or multicellular algae); filter feeders (strain plankton, organic particles, and sometimes bacteria out of the water); deposit feeders (that eat mud and digest the organic molecules and nutrients out of it); herbivores (eat primary producers); and predators (carnivores). Just as on land, most of the carnivores eat herbivores or smaller carnivores, but in the ocean they can also eat many of the filter feeders and deposit feeders. Most animals have growth efficiencies of 10–20%, so 80–90% of what they ingest ends up as waste in one form or another (some dissipated heat, some physical waste, etc.). The role of coral in this biodiverse environment is largely to partition the space and allow species to condense and coexist by giving a large number of species each its own chance at a livable environment in a relatively small space—the aquatic analogue of high-rise urbanization. Coral also provides some amount of filter feeding, which helps clean the water. The ability of an area to support coral depends on many factors, the most important of which is water quality. For example, corals in Bolinao are able to live and reproduce in waters that contain half a million to a million bacteria per milliliter and 0.25ug chlorophyll per liter (a proxy for phytoplankton biomass). The fish pen channel currently sees levels upwards of ten million bacteria per milliliter and 15ug chlorophyll per liter. Excess nutrients from the milkfish farms encourage fast-growing algae to choke out coral growth, and particulate influx from the milkfish farms reduces corals ability to photosynthesize. Therefore, before coral larvae can begin to grow, acceptable water quality must be established. Other threats to coral include degradation from increasing ocean acidity due to increased atmospheric CO2, and degradation from increasing ocean temperature due to global warming. These can be considered second order threats which we will not specifically address in this problem.
Problem Statement
The challenge for this problem is to come up with viable polyculture systems to replace the current monoculture farming of milkfish that would improve water quality sufficiently that coral larvae could begin settling and recolonizing the area. Your polyculture scenario should be economically interesting and environmentally friendly both in the short and long term.
1. MODEL THE ORIGINAL BOLINAO CORAL REEF ECOSYSTEM BEFORE FISHFARM INTRODUCTION:
Develop a model of an intact coral reef foodweb containing the milkfish as the only predatory fish species, one particular herbivorous fish (of your choice), one mollusc species, one crustacean species, one echinoderm species, and one algae species. Specify the numbers of each species present in a way you find reasonable; cite the sources you use or show the estimates you make in arriving at these population numbers. In articulating your model, specify how each species interacts with the others Show how your model predicts a steady state level of water quality sufficient for the continued healthy growth of your coral species. If your model does not yield a high enough level of water quality, then adjust your number of each species in a way you find most reasonable until you do achieve a satisfactory quality level, and describe clearly which species numbers you adjusted and why your changes were reasonable.
2. MODEL THE CURRENT BOLINAO MONOCULTURE MILKFISH:
a. First examine the impact if milkfish farming were to suppress other animal species. Do this by removing (setting the population to zero of) all herbivorous fish, all molluscs, all crustaceans, and all echinoderms. Set all other populations to be the same as in your full model above. Since you have removed the milkfish’s natural food supply, you will need to introduce a constant term that models farmer feeding of the penned milkfish; choose this term to keep your model in equilibrium. What steady state level of water quality does your model now predict? Is water quality sufficient for the continued healthy growth of your coral species? Compare and describe how your result compares to observations.
b. Milkfish farming does not totally suppress all other animal species and water quality is probably not as bad as your results from part 2a suggest, so use your model to simulate the current Bolinao situation by reintroducing all deleted species and adjust only those populations until water quality matches that currently observed in Bolinao. Compare your populations with those currently observed in Bolinao and discuss what changes to your model could bring your population predictions into closer agreement with observations.
3. MODEL THE REMEDIATION OF BOLINAO VIA POLYCULTURE:
You now strive to replace the current monoculture with a polyculture industry, seeking to make the water clear enough that the original reef ecosystem that you modeled in part 1 can re-establish itself without any help from humans. The idea is to introduce an interdependent set of species such that, whatever feed the milkfish farmer puts in, the combination of all of his/her “livestock” will use it entirely so that there are no (or only minimal) leftover nutrients and particles (feed and feces) falling onto the newly growing reef habitat below. Additionally, you seek to commercially harvest edible biomass from this polyculture in order to feed humans and increase value.
a. Develop a commercial polyculture to remediate Bolinao. Do this by starting with your “current” penned model from part 2b, and introduce into it additional species that both help clean the water and yield valuable, harvestable biomass. For example, you could line the pens with mussels, oysters, clams or other economically valuable filter feeder to remove some of the waste from the milkfish. Economically valuable algae could be grown on the sides of the pens near the surface (where they get enough light), and some of these could feed the small herbivorous fish that feed the milkfish. Clearly present your model and its steady state populations.
b. Report on the outputs of your model. What did you optimize, what constraints did you enforce, and why? What water quality does your model yield? How much harvest does your model yield, and what is its economic value? How much does it cost you to further improve water quality? In other words, from your optimal scenario, how many dollars of harvest does it cost you to improve water quality by one unit?
4. SCIENCE:
Discuss the harvesting of each species for human consumption. How do we use your model for predicting or understanding harvesting for human consumption? Does a harvested pound of carnivorous fish count the same as a harvested pound of seaweed so that we seek to maximize total weight harvested, or do we differentiate by value (as measured by price of each harvested species) so that we seek to maximize the value of the harvest? Or do we seek to maximize the total value of harvest minus cost of milkfish feed? Should we define the value of edible biomass as the sum of the values of each species harvested, minus the cost of milkfish feed?
5. MAXIMIZE THE VALUE OF THE TOTAL HARVEST:
We now wish to maintain an acceptable (maximal) level of water quality while harvesting a high (maximal) value of marketable (because edible and sell-able for byproducts are equally legitimate ways to maximize value) biomass from all living species in the model for human consumption. Change your model to harvest a constant amount from each species. What is the total value of biomass (as defined above) you can harvest and the corresponding water quality? Try different harvesting strategies and different levels of milkfish feeding (always choosing values that will keep your model in equilibrium), and graph water quality as a function harvest value. What strategy is optimal and what is the optimal harvest?
6. CALL TO ACTION:
Write an information paper to the director of the Pacific Marine Fisheries Council summarizing your findings on the relationship between biodiversity and water quality for coral growth. Include a strategy for remediating an area like Bolinao and how long it will take to remediate. Present your optimal harvesting/feeding strategy from part 5 above along with persuasive justification, and present suggested fishing/harvest quotas that will implement your plan. Show the leverage of your strategy by presenting the ratio of the harvest value under your plan to the harvest value under the current Bolinao scenario. Discuss the pros and cons from an ecological perspective of implementing your polyculture system.
Getting Started References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Multi-trophic_Aquaculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Coral/home.html
Supplementary Information
See PDF of problem statement for figures and tables
2008 A - Take a Bath
Consider the effects on land from the melting of the north polar ice cap due to the predicted increase in global temperatures. Specifically, model the effects on the coast of Florida every ten years for the next 50 years due to the melting, with particular attention given to large metropolitan areas. Propose appropriate responses to deal with this. A careful discussion of the data used is an important part of the answer.
2008 B - Creating Sudoku Puzzles
Develop an algorithm to construct Sudoku puzzles of varying difficulty. Develop metrics to define a difficulty level. The algorithm and metrics should be extensible to a varying number of difficulty levels. You should illustrate the algorithm with at least 4 difficulty levels. Your algorithm should guarantee a unique solution. Analyze the complexity of your algorithm. Your objective should be to minimize the complexity of the algorithm and meet the above requirements.
2008 C - Finding the Good in Health Care Systems
Nations have systems for providing health care for their residents. Issues that are often of concern to people and are often in the news include which systems are better and whether current systems can be improved. Aspects of these systems vary widely between nations: how they are funded; whether services are delivered through public, private, or non-profit organizations; whether public insurance is universal for all residents; who is eligible for assistance; what care is covered; whether the latest medical procedures are available; and how much is required as user fees. Other factors that are often debated in determining the quality of care include: coverage for complementary care (glasses, dental, prostheses, prescription drugs, etc); which diseases are the most critical in affecting overall health; percentage of GDP spent on health care; percentage of health care costs that goes toward labor/administrative/malpractice insurance; ratio of public to private spending on health care; per capita spending on health care; growth of per capita spending on health care; number of participating physicians; per capita sick days; fairness of care in terms of age, race, gender, socio-economic class; and many more. Adding to the complications are healthrelated factors such as personal exercise, food availability, climate, occupations of citizens, and smoking habits.
The World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations, is a source of data on health factors. The annual World Health Report (http://www.who.int/whr/en/index.html) assesses global health factors and World Health Statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organisation) provides health statistics for the countries in the UN. The production and dissemination of health statistics is a major function of WHO. To many people, these data and the associated analyses are considered unbiased and very valuable to the world community. There are many other sources of reliable health data available.
Part I: Describe several different outcomes (metrics) that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a country’s health care system, such as average life expectancy of its residents. What metric would you use to make comparisons between existing and potential systems? Can you combine your metrics to make them even more useful in measuring quality?
Part II: Identify current sources of data that provide the raw data needed to compute the metrics you have identified above. You may need to modify your list of metrics based on the availability of data. Explain why you have selected those data and demonstrate how they can be used to assess and compare the relative effectiveness of health care systems as they exist in different countries.
Part III: Choose at least three of the most important and viable metrics for comparing health care systems. Justify why these are the most useful for this purpose. Can any of these help measure the historical change in an existing health care system? Are they measurable and can the data be easily collected?
Part IV: Use your three (or more) metrics to compare the United States health care system with one other country that is considered to have good health care using the most recent year for which you have data. Which country has the better health care system? Is your answer definitive?
Part V: Using your metrics, compare the United States and one other country which is considered to have poor health care using the most recent year for which you have data. Which country has the better health care system?
Part VI: Pick a country’s (US or other) health care system and restructure it to improve the system based on your metrics. Build predictive models to test various changes to determine if the changes will improve the overall quality of the system. Suggest major change(s) that can improve the system.
2007 A - Gerrymandering
Gerrymandering The United States Constitution provides that the House of Representatives shall be composed of some number (currently 435) of individuals who are elected from each state in proportion to the state’s population relative to that of the country as a whole. While this provides a way of determining how many representatives each state will have, it says nothing about how the district represented by a particular representative shall be determined geographically. This oversight has led to egregious (at least some people think so, usually not the incumbent) district shapes that look “unnatural” by some standards.
Hence the following question: Suppose you were given the opportunity to draw congressional districts for a state. How would you do so as a purely “baseline” exercise to create the “simplest” shapes for all the districts in a state? The rules include only that each district in the state must contain the same population. The definition of “simple” is up to you; but you need to make a convincing argument to voters in the state that your solution is fair. As an application of your method, draw geographically simple congressional districts for the state of New York.
2007 B - The Airplane Seating Problem
Airlines are free to seat passengers waiting to board an aircraft in any order whatsoever. It has become customary to seat passengers with special needs first, followed by first-class passengers (who sit at the front of the plane). Then coach and business-class passengers are seated by groups of rows, beginning with the row at the back of the plane and proceeding forward.
Apart from consideration of the passengers’ wait time, from the airline’s point of view, time is money, and boarding time is best minimized. The plane makes money for the airline only when it is in motion, and long boarding times limit the number of trips that a plane can make in a day.
The development of larger planes, such as the Airbus A380 (800 passengers), accentuate the problem of minimizing boarding (and deboarding) time.
Devise and compare procedures for boarding and deboarding planes with varying numbers of passengers: small (85–210), midsize (210–330), and large (450–800).
Prepare an executive summary, not to exceed two single-spaced pages, in which you set out your conclusions to an audience of airline executives, gate agents, and flight crews.
An article appeared in the NY Times Nov 14, 2006 addressing procedures currently being followed and the importance to the airline of finding better solutions. The article can be seen at: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/business/14boarding.html
2007 C - Organ Transplant: The Kidney Exchange Problem
Transplant Network: Despite the continuing and dramatic advances in medicine and health technology, the demand for organs for transplantation drastically exceeds the number of donors. To help this situation, US Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act in 1984, establishing the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to match organ donors to patients with organ needs. Even with all this organizational technology and service in place, there are nearly 94,000 transplant candidates in the US waiting for an organ transplant and this number is predicted to exceed 100,000 very soon. The average wait time exceeds three years—double that in some areas, such as large cities. Organs for transplant are obtained either from a cadaver queue or from living donors. The keys for the effective use of the cadaver queue are cooperation and good communication throughout the network. The good news is that the system is functioning and more and more donors (alive and deceased) are identified and used each year with record numbers of transplants taking place every month. The bad news is that the candidate list grows longer and longer. Some people think that the current system with both regional and national aspects is headed for collapse with consequential failures for some of the neediest patients. Moreover, fundamental questions remain: Can this network be improved and how do we improve the effectiveness of a complex network like OPTN? Different countries have different processes and policies, which of these work best? What is the future status of the current system?
Task 1: For a beginning reference, read the OPTN Website (http://www.optn.org) with its policy descriptions and data banks ( http://www.optn.org/data and http://www.optn.org/latestData/viewDataReports.asp ). Build a mathematical model for the generic US transplant network(s). This model must be able to give insight into the following: Where are the potential bottlenecks for efficient organ matching? If more resources were available for improving the efficiency of the donor-matching process, where and how could they be used? Would this network function better if it was divided into smaller networks (for instance at the state level)? And finally, can you make the system more effective by saving and prolonging more lives? If so, suggest policy changes and modify your model to reflect these improvements.
Task 2: Investigate the transplantation policies used in a country other than the US. By modifying your model from Task 1, determine if the US policy be would improved by implementing the procedures used in the other country. As members of an expert analysis team (knowledge of public health issues and network science) hired by Congress to perform a study of these questions, write a one-page report to Congress addressing the questions and issues of Task 1 and the information and possible improvements you have discovered from your research of the different country’s policies. Be sure to reference how you used your models from Task 1 to help address the issues.
Focusing on Kidney Exchange: Kidneys filter blood, remove waste, make hormones, and produce urine. Kidney failure can be caused by many different diseases and conditions. People with end-stage kidney disease face death, dialysis (at over $60,000/yr), or the hope for a kidney transplant. A transplant can come from the cadavers of an individual who agreed to donate organs after death or from a live donor. In the US, about 68,000 patients are waiting for a kidney from a deceased donor, while each year only 10,000 are transplanted from cadavers and 6,000 from living individuals (usually relatives of the patients). Hence the median wait for a matching kidney is three years—unfortunately, some needy patients do not survive long enough to receive a kidney.
There are many issues involved in kidney transplantation—the overall physical and mental health of the recipient, the financial situation of the recipient (insurance for transplant and post-operation medication), and donor availability (is there a living donor willing to provide a kidney). The transplanted kidney must be of a compatible ABO blood type. The 5-year survival of the transplant is enhanced by minimizing the number of mismatches on six HLA markers in the blood. At least 2,000 would-be-donor/recipient pairs are thwarted each year because of blood-type incompatibility or poor HLA match. Other sources indicate that over 6,000 people on the current waiting list have a willing but incompatible donor. This is a significant loss to the donor population and worthy of consideration when making new policies and procedures.
An idea that originated in Korea is that of a kidney exchange system, which can take place either with a living donor or with the cadaver queue. One exchange is paired-kidney donation, where each of two patients has a willing donor who is incompatible, but each donor is compatible with the other patient; each donor donates to the other patient, usually in the same hospital on the same day. Another idea is list paired donation, in which a willing donor, on behalf of a particular patient, donates to another person waiting for a cadaver kidney; in return, the patient of the donor-patient pair receives higher priority for a compatible kidney from the cadaver queue. Yet a third idea is to expand the paired-kidney donation to 3-way, 4-way, or a circle (n-paired) in which each donor gives to the next patient around the circle. On November 20, 2006, 12 surgeons performed the firstever 5-way kidney swap at Johns Hopkins Medical Facility. None of the intended donor-recipient transplants were possible because of incompatibilities between the donor and the originally intended recipient. At any given time, there are many patient-donor pairs (perhaps as many as 6,000) with varying blood types and HLA markers. Meanwhile, the cadaver queue receives kidneys daily and is emptied daily as the assignments are made and the transplants performed.
Task 3: Devise a procedure to maximize the number and quality of exchanges, taking into account the medical and psychological dynamics of the situation. Justify in what way your procedure achieves a maximum. Estimate how many more annual transplants your procedure will generate, and the resulting effect on the waiting list.
Strategies: Patients can face agonizing choices. For example, suppose a barely compatible—in terms of HLA mismatches—kidney becomes available from the cadaver queue. Should they take it or wait for a better match from the cadaver queue or from an exchange? In particular, a cadaver kidney has a shorter half-life than a live donor kidney.
Task 4: Devise a strategy for a patient to decide whether to take an offered kidney, or to even participate in a kidney exchange. Consider the risks, alternatives, and probabilities in your analysis.
Ethical Concerns: Transplantation is a controversial issue with both technical and political issues that involve balancing what is best for society with what is best for the individual. Criteria have been developed very carefully to try to ensure that people on the waiting list are treated fairly, and several of the policies try to address the ethical concerns of who should go on to the list or who should come off. Criteria involved for getting on or coming off the list can include diagnosis of a malignant disease, HIV infection or AIDS, severe cardiovascular disease, a history of non-compliance with prior treatment, or poorly controlled psychosis. Criteria used in determining placement priority include: time on the waiting list, the quality of the match between donor and recipient, and the physical distance between the donor and the recipient. As a result of recent changes in policy, children under 18 years of age receive priority on the waiting list and often receive a transplant within weeks or months of being placed on the list. The United Network for Organ Sharing Website recently (Oct 27, 2006) showed the age of waiting patients as:
Under 18: 748
18 to 34: 8,033
35 to 49: 20,553
50 to 64: 28,530
65 and over: 10,628
One ethical issue of continual concern is the amount of emphasis and priority on age to increase overall living time saved through donations. From a statistical standpoint, since age appears to be the most important factor in predicting length of survival, some believe kidneys are being squandered on older recipients.
Political issues: Regionalization of the transplant system has produced political ramifications (e.g., someone may desperately need a kidney and is quite high on the queue, but his or her deceased neighbor's kidney still can go to an alcoholic drug dealer 500 miles away in a big city). Doctors living in small communities, who want to do a good job in transplants, need continuing experience by doing a minimum number of transplants per year. However, the kidneys from these small communities frequently go to the hospitals in the big city and, therefore, the local doctors cannot maintain their proficiency. This raises the question, should transplants be performed only in a few large centers, by a few expert and experienced surgeons? Would that be a fair system and would it add or detract from system efficiency?
Many other ethical and political issues are being debated. Some of the current policies can be found at http://www.unos.org/policiesandbylaws/policies.asp?resources=true For example, recent laws have been passed in the US that forbid the selling or mandating the donation of organs, yet there are many agencies advocating for donors to receive financial compensation for their organ. The state of Illinois has a new policy that assumes everyone desires to be an organ donor (presumed consent) and people must opt out if they do not. The Department of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation is expected to recommend that all states adopt policies of presumed consent for organ donation. The final decision on new national policies rests with the Health Resources and Services Administration within the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Task 5: Based on your analysis, do you recommend any changes to these criteria and policies? Discuss the ethical dimensions of your recommended exchange procedure and your recommended patient strategy (Tasks 3 and 4). Rank order the criteria you would use for priority and placement, as above, with rationale as to why you placed each where you did. Would you consider allowing people to sell organs for transplantation? Write a onepage paper to the Director of the US Health Resources and Services Administration with your recommendations.
Task 6: From the potential donor’s perspective, the risks in volunteering involve assessing the probability of success for the recipient, the probability of survival of the donor, the probability of future health problems for the donor, the probability of future health risks (such as failure of the one remaining kidney), and the postoperative pain and recovery. How do these risks and others affect the decision of the donor? How do perceived risks and personal issues (phobias, irrational fears, misinformation, previous experiences with surgery, level of altruism, and level of trust) influence the decision to donate? If entering a list paired network rather than a direct transplant to the relative or friend, does the size n of the n-paired network have any effect on the decision of the potential donor? Can your models be modified to reflect and analyze any of these issues? Finally, suggest ways to develop and recruit more altruistic donors.
2006 A - Positioning and Moving Sprinkler Systems for Irrigation
There are a wide variety of techniques available for irrigating a field. The technologies range from advanced drip systems to periodic flooding. One of the systems that is used on smaller ranches is the use of "hand move" irrigation systems. Lightweight aluminum pipes with sprinkler heads are put in place across fields, and they are moved by hand at periodic intervals to insure that the whole field receives an adequate amount of water. This type of irrigation system is cheaper and easier to maintain than other systems. It is also flexible, allowing for use on a wide variety of fields and crops. The disadvantage is that it requires a great deal of time and effort to move and set up the equipment at regular intervals.
Given that this type of irrigation system is to be used, how can it be configured to minimize the amount of time required to irrigate a field that is 80 meters by 30 meters? For this task you are asked to find an algorithm to determine how to irrigate the rectangular field that minimizes the amount of time required by a rancher to maintain the irrigation system. One pipe set is used in the field. You should determine the number of sprinklers and the spacing between sprinklers, and you should find a schedule to move the pipes, including where to move them.
A pipe set consists of a number of pipes that can be connected together in a straight line. Each pipe has a 10 cm inner diameter with rotating spray nozzles that have a 0.6 cm inner diameter. When put together the resulting pipe is 20 meters long. At the water source, the pressure is 420 Kilo- Pascal’s and has a flow rate of 150 liters per minute. No part of the field should receive more than 0.75 cm per hour of water, and each part of the field should receive at least 2 centimeters of water every 4 days. The total amount of water should be applied as uniformly as possible.
2006 B - Wheel Chair Access at Airports
One of the frustrations with air travel is the need to fly through multiple airports, and each stop generally requires each traveler to change to a different airplane. This can be especially difficult for people who are not able to easily walk to a different flight's waiting area. One of the ways that an airline can make the transition easier is to provide a wheel chair and an escort to those people who ask for help. It is generally known well in advance which passengers require help, but it is not uncommon to receive notice when a passenger first registers at the airport. In rare instances an airline may not receive notice from a passenger until just prior to landing.
Airlines are under constant pressure to keep their costs down. Wheel chairs wear out and are expensive and require maintenance. There is also a cost for making the escorts available. Moreover, wheel chairs and their escorts must be constantly moved around the airport so that they are available to people when their flight lands. In some large airports the time required to move across the airport is nontrivial. The wheel chairs must be stored somewhere, but space is expensive and severely limited in an airport terminal. Also, wheel chairs left in high traffic areas represent a liability risk as people try to move around them. Finally, one of the biggest costs is the cost of holding a plane if someone must wait for an escort and becomes late for their flight. The latter cost is especially troubling because it can affect the airline's average flight delay which can lead to fewer ticket sales as potential customers may choose to avoid an airline.
Epsilon Airlines has decided to ask a third party to help them obtain a detailed analysis of the issues and costs of keeping and maintaining wheel chairs and escorts available for passengers. The airline needs to find a way to schedule the movement of wheel chairs throughout each day in a cost effective way. They also need to find and define the costs for budget planning in both the short and long term.
Epsilon Airlines has asked your consultant group to put together a bid to help them solve their problem. Your bid should include an overview and analysis of the situation to help them decide if you fully understand their problem. They require a detailed description of an algorithm that you would like to implement which can determine where the escorts and wheel chairs should be and how they should move throughout each day. The goal is to keep the total costs as low as possible. Your bid is one of many that the airline will consider. You must make a strong case as to why your solution is the best and show that it will be able to handle a wide range of airports under a variety of circumstances.
Your bid should also include examples of how the algorithm would work for a large (at least 4 concourses), a medium (at least two concourses), and a small airport (one concourse) under high and low traffic loads. You should determine all potential costs and balance their respective weights. Finally, as populations begin to include a higher percentage of older people who have more time to travel but may require more aid, your report should include projections of potential costs and needs in the future with recommendations to meet future needs.
2006 C - Trade-offs in the fight against HIV/AIDS
As the HIV/AIDS pandemic enters its 25th year, both the number of infections and number of deaths due to the disease continue to rise. Despite an enormous amount of effort, our global society remains uncertain on how to most effectively allocate resources to fight this epidemic.
You are a team of analysts advising the United Nations (UN) on how to manage the available resources for addressing HIV/AIDS. Your job is to model several scenarios of interest and to use your models to recommend the allocation of financial resources. The narrative below provides some background information, and outlines specific tasks.
Task #1: For each of the continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Australia, and South America), choose the country you believe to be most critical in terms of HIV/AIDS. Build a model to approximate the expected rate of change in the number of HIV/AIDS infections for these countries from 2006 to 2050, in the absence of any additional interventions. Fully explain your model and the assumptions that underlie your model. In addition, explain how you selected the countries to model.
There are a number of interventions that HIV/AIDS funding could be directed towards -- including prevention interventions (voluntary counseling and testing, condom social marketing, school-based AIDS education, medicines to prevent mother-to-child transmission, etc.) and care interventions (treating other untreated sexually transmitted diseases, treating opportunistic infections, etc.). You should focus on only two potential interventions: provision of antiretroviral (ARV) drug therapies, and provision of a hypothetical HIV/AIDS preventative vaccine.
Task #2: First, estimate the level of financial resources from foreign aid donors that you realistically expect to be available to address HIV/AIDS, by year, from 2006 to 2050, for the countries you selected in Task #1. Then use the model you developed in Task #1 and these estimates of financial resources to estimate the expected rate of change in the number of HIV/AIDS infections for your selected countries from 2006 to 2050 under realistic assumptions for the following three scenarios: (1) Antiretroviral (ARV) drug therapy (2) A preventative HIV/AIDS vaccine (3) Both ARV provision and a preventative HIV/AIDS vaccine Assume in these scenarios that there is no risk of emergence of drug-resistant strains of HIV (you will examine this issue in Task #3).
Be sure to carefully describe the assumptions that underlie your model.
You can choose whether these scenarios should be implemented for all of the countries you selected in Task #1, or for certain subsets of countries based on income cut-offs, disease burden, etc. Available for use if you wish is a spreadsheet of country-level income data.
ARV drug therapies can have tremendous benefits in terms of prolonging the lives of individuals infected with HIV/AIDS. ARVs are keeping a high proportion of HIV/AIDS-infected individuals in rich countries alive, and policy makers and international institutions are facing tremendous political pressure to increase access to ARVs for individuals in poor countries. Health budgets in low-income countries are very limited, and it seems unlikely that poor countries will be able to successfully expand these programs to the majority of their populations using their own resources. Appendix 1 presents country-specific data from UNAIDS on current access to ARVs for a number of countries
The efficacy of ARVs depends in large part on adherence to the treatment regimen and to proper monitoring. The most favorable conditions for ARVs are structured programs with extensive counseling and physician care, as well as regular testing to monitor for disease progression and the onset of opportunistic infections. Non-adherence or inadequate treatment carries with it two very serious consequences. First, the treatment may not be effective for the individual undergoing treatment. Second, partial or inadequate treatments are thought to directly lead to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of HIV.
The price of the drugs initially used to treat patients has come down to several hundred dollars a year per patient, but delivering them and providing the necessary accompanying medical care and further treatment is the key administrative and financial challenge. It is estimated that purchasing and delivering antiretrovirals using the clinically-recommended approach (DOTS, or directly observed short course treatments) which is intended to minimize the emergence of drug-resistant strains would cost less than $1,100 per person per year. (Adams, Gregor et al. [2001]. “Consensus Statement on Antiretroviral Treatment for AIDS in Poor Countries,”)
For a preventative HIV vaccine, make assumptions you feel are reasonable about the following (in addition to other factors you may choose to include in your model):
- The year in which an HIV/AIDS preventative vaccine might be available
- How quickly vaccination rates might reach the following steady-state levels of vaccination:
- If you wish to immunize new cohorts (infants), assume the steady-state level for new cohorts of the country-by-country immunization rates for the third dose of the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine (DTP3), as reported by the WHO (2002)
- If you wish to immunize adults (any group over age 5), assume the steady-state level for older cohorts is the second dose of the tetanus toxoid (TT2) rate, as reported by the WHO (2002)
- The efficacy and duration of protection of the vaccine
- Whether there would be epidemiological externalities from vaccination
- Assume the vaccine is a three-dose vaccine, and can be added to the standard package of vaccines delivered under the WHO’s Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) at an incremental cost of addition of $0.75
Task #3: Re-formulate the three models developed in Task #2, taking into consideration the following assumptions about the development of ARV-resistant disease strains.
Current estimates suggest that patients falling below 90-95 percent adherence to ARV treatment are at a “substantial risk” of producing drug resistant strains. Use as an assumption for your analysis that a person receiving ARV treatment with adherence below 90 percent has a 5 percent chance of producing a strain of HIV/AIDS which is resistant to standard first-line drug treatments.
Second- and third-line ARV drug therapies are available, but assume for your analysis that these drugs are prohibitively expensive to implement in countries outside of Europe, Japan, and the United States
Task #4: Write a white paper to the United Nations providing your team’s recommendations on the following:
- Your recommendations for allocation of the resources available for HIV/AIDS among ARV provision and a preventative HIV vaccine
- Your argument for how to weigh the importance of HIV/AIDS as an international concern relative to other foreign policy priorities
- Your recommendations for how to coordinate donor involvement for HIV/AIDS
For (1): assume that between now and 2010 the available financial resources could be allocated so as the speed the development of a preventative HIV vaccine – through directly-financing vaccine research and development (R&D), or through other mechanisms. Any gains from such spending would move the date of development you assumed in Task #2 to some earlier date.
Here is a zip file which contains a PDF of the problem and all associated data (10) files. (File Size 3MB)
2005 A - Flood Planning
Lake Murray in central South Carolina is formed by a large earthen dam, which was completed in 1930 for power production. Model the flooding downstream in the event there is a catastrophic earthquake that breaches the dam.
Two particular questions:
Rawls Creek is a year-round stream that flows into the Saluda River a short distance downriver from the dam. How much flooding will occur in Rawls Creek from a dam failure, and how far back will it extend?
Could the flood be so massive downstream that water would reach up to the S.C. State Capitol Building, which is on a hill overlooking the Congaree River?
2005 B - Tollbooths
Heavily-traveled toll roads such as the Garden State Parkway, Interstate 95, and so forth, are multi-lane divided highways that are interrupted at intervals by toll plazas. Because collecting tolls is usually unpopular, it is desirable to minimize motorist annoyance by limiting the amount of traffic disruption caused by the toll plazas. Commonly, a much larger number of tollbooths is provided than the number of travel lanes entering the toll plaza. Upon entering the toll plaza, the flow of vehicles fans out to the larger number of tollbooths, and when leaving the toll plaza, the flow of vehicles is required to squeeze back down to a number of travel lanes equal to the number of travel lanes before the toll plaza. Consequently, when traffic is heavy, congestion increases upon departure from the toll plaza. When traffic is very heavy, congestion also builds at the entry to the toll plaza because of the time required for each vehicle to pay the toll.
Make a model to help you determine the optimal number of tollbooths to deploy in a barrier-toll plaza. Explicitly consider the scenario where there is exactly one tollbooth per incoming travel lane. Under what conditions is this more or less effective than the current practice? Note that the definition of "optimal" is up to you to determine.
2005 C - Nonrenewable Resources
Select a vital nonrenewable or exhaustible resource (water, mineral, energy, food, etc.) for which your team can find appropriate world-wide historic data on its endowment, discovery, annual consumption, and price.
The modeling tasks are:
- Using the endowment, discoveries, and consumption data, model the depletion or degradation of the commodity over a long horizon using resource modeling principles.
- Adjust the model to account for future economic, demographic, political and environmental factors. Be sure to reveal the details of your model, provide visualizations of the model’s output, and explain limitations of the model.
- Create a fair, practical "harvesting/management" policy that may include economic incentives or disincentives, which sustain the usage over a long period of time while avoiding severe disruption of consumption, degradation or rapid exhaustion of the resource.
- Develop a "security" policy that protects the resource against theft, misuse, disruption, and unnecessary degradation or destruction of the resource. Other issues that may need to be addressed are political and security management alternatives associated with these policies.
- Develop policies to control any short- or long-term "environmental effects" of the harvesting. Be sure to include issues such as pollutants, increased susceptibility to natural disasters, waste handling and storage, and other factors you deem appropriate.
- Compare this resource with any other alternatives for its purpose. What new science or technologies could be developed to mitigate the use and potential exhaustion of this resource? Develop a research policy to advance these new areas.
2004 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.
2004 B - A Faster QuickPass System
"QuickPass" systems are increasingly appearing to reduce people's time waiting in line, whether it is at tollbooths, amusement parks, or elsewhere. Consider the design of a QuickPass system for an amusement park. The amusement park has experimented by offering QuickPasses for several popular rides as a test. The idea is that for certain popular rides you can go to a kiosk near that ride and insert your daily park entrance ticket, and out will come a slip that states that you can return to that ride at a specific time later. For example, you insert your daily park entrance ticket at 1:15 pm, and the QuickPass states that you can come back between 3:30 and 4:30 pm when you can use your slip to enter a second, and presumably much shorter, line that will get you to the ride faster. To prevent people from obtaining QuickPasses for several rides at once, the QuickPass machines allow you to have only one active QuickPass at a time.
You have been hired as one of several competing consultants to improve the operation of QuickPass. Customers have been complaining about some anomalies in the test system. For example, customers observed that in one instance QuickPasses were being offered for a return time as long as 4 hours later. A short time later on the same ride, the QuickPasses were given for times only an hour or so later. In some instances, the lines for people with Quickpasses are nearly as long and slow as the regular lines.
The problem then is to propose and test schemes for issuing QuickPasses in order to increase people's enjoyment of the amusement park. Part of the problem is to determine what criteria to use in evaluating alternative schemes. Include in your report a non-technical summary for amusement park executives who must choose between alternatives from competing consultants.
2004 C - To Be Secure or Not to Be?
Click the title to view a PDF version of this problem: To Be Secure or Not to Be?
2003 A - The Stunt Person
An exciting action scene in a movie is going to be filmed, and you are the stunt coordinator! A stunt person on a motorcycle will jump over an elephant and land in a pile of cardboard boxes to cushion their fall. You need to protect the stunt person, and also use relatively few cardboard boxes (lower cost, not seen by camera, etc.).
Your job is to:
- determine what size boxes to use
- determine how many boxes to use
- determine how the boxes will be stacked
- determine if any modifications to the boxes would help
- generalize to different combined weights (stunt person & motorcycle) and different jump heights
2003 B - Gamma Knife Treatment Planning
Stereotactic radiosurgery delivers a single high dose of ionizing radiation to a radiographically well-defined, small intracranial 3D brain tumor without delivering any significant fraction of the prescribed dose to the surrounding brain tissue. Three modalities are commonly used in this area; they are the gamma knife unit, heavy charged particle beams, and external high-energy photon beams from linear accelerators.
The gamma knife unit delivers a single high dose of ionizing radiation emanating from 201 cobalt-60 unit sources through a heavy helmet. All 201 beams simultaneously intersect at the isocenter, resulting in a spherical (approximately) dose distribution at the effective dose levels. Irradiating the isocenter to deliver dose is termed a “shot.” Shots can be represented as different spheres. Four interchangeable outer collimator helmets with beam channel diameters of 4, 8, 14, and 18 mm are available for irradiating different size volumes. For a target volume larger than one shot, multiple shots can be used to cover the entire target. In practice, most target volumes are treated with 1 to 15 shots. The target volume is a bounded, three-dimensional digital image that usually consists of millions of points.
The goal of radiosurgery is to deplete tumor cells while preserving normal structures. Since there are physical limitations and biological uncertainties involved in this therapy process, a treatment plan needs to account for all those limitations and uncertainties. In general, an optimal treatment plan is designed to meet the following requirements.
- Minimize the dose gradient across the target volume.
- Match specified isodose contours to the target volumes.
- Match specified dose-volume constraints of the target and critical organ.
- Minimize the integral dose to the entire volume of normal tissues or organs.
- Constrain dose to specified normal tissue points below tolerance doses.
- Minimize the maximum dose to critical volumes.
In gamma unit treatment planning, we have the following constraints:
- Prohibit shots from protruding outside the target.
- Prohibit shots from overlapping (to avoid hot spots).
- Cover the target volume with effective dosage as much as possible. But at least 90% of the target volume must be covered by shots.
- Use as few shots as possible.
Your tasks are to formulate the optimal treatment planning for a gamma knife unit as a sphere-packing problem, and propose an algorithm to find a solution. While designing your algorithm, you must keep in mind that your algorithm must be reasonably efficient.
2003 I - Aviation Baggage Screening Strategies: To Screen or Not to Screen, that is the Question
You are an analysis team in the Office of Security Operations for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), responsible for the Midwest Region of the United States. New laws will soon mandate 100% screening of all checked bags at the 429 passenger airports throughout the nation by explosive detection systems (EDSs; see Figure 1). EDSs use computed tomography (CT) technology to scan checked bags, similar to how CAT scans are used in hospitals. Using multiple x-rays of each bag, EDSs create three-dimensional images of a bag’s content, showing the density of each item. This information is utilized to determine whether an explosive device is present. Experimentation with EDSs indicate that each device is operational about 92% of the time and each device can examine between 160 and 210 bags per hour.
The TSA has been actively purchasing EDSs and deploying them at airports throughout the nation. Given that these devices cost nearly $1 million each, weigh as much as eight tons, and cost several thousand dollars to install in an airport, determining the correct number of devices to deploy at each airport and how to best use them (once operational) are important problems.
Currently, manufacturers are not able to produce the expected number of EDSs required to meet the federal mandate of 100% screening of checked luggage. Because of the limited number of EDS machines available, the Director of Airport Security for the Midwest Region (Mr. Sheldon) is not surprised that the TSA is requesting a detailed analysis on the estimated number of EDSs required at all airports. In addition, given the limited space and funds available for each airport, Mr. Sheldon believes that at some point a detailed analysis of emerging technologies will be needed. Promising technologies with more modest space and labor costs will emerge in the coming decade (e.g. x-ray diffraction; neutron-based detection; quadropole resonance; millimeter wave imaging; and microwave imaging).
Task 1: You have been tasked by your Director, Mr. Sheldon, to develop a model to determine the number of EDSs required at two of the largest facilities in the region, Airports A & B, which are described in the Technical Information Sheet (TIS)–Appendix A. Carefully describe the assumptions that you make in designing the model, then use your model to recommend the number of EDSs required using the data provided in Table 1 of the TIS.
Task 2: Prepare a short (one page) position paper to accompany your model that describes the security-related objectives of the airlines and the constraints that the airlines must work within for the sets of flights described in Table 1 of the TIS.
Task 3: Since security screening takes time and might delay passengers, the airport managers at Airports A & B request that you develop a model that can help the airlines determine how to schedule the departure of different types of flights within the peak hour. Carefully describe all the assumptions that you make in designing the model and use your model to produce a schedule for the two airports with the data provided in Table 1.
Task 4: Based on your analysis, what can you recommend to Mr. Sheldon and the airlines about checked baggage screening for the flights during the peak hours at your two airports?
Task 5: Mr. Sheldon realizes that your work may have national impact and requests that you write a memo explaining how your models can be adapted to determine the number of EDSs and airline scheduling for all 193 airports in the Midwest Region. He will send the memo along with the models and the analysis to the Director of the Office of Security Operations (his boss) at the TSA and to all security directors of other airports in the region for their comment and possible implementation.
Additional security measures associated with higher risks may require that up to 20% of the passengers will need to have all their checked bags screened through both an EDS and an explosive trace detection (ETD) machine, even though an EDS is 98.5% accurate in identifying explosive devices in checked bags. ETD machines use mass spectrometry technology to detect minute particles of explosive compounds. Each ETD machine costs $45,000 to purchase, however, the labor cost to operate the ETD machine is approximately 10 times that of the EDS. ETD can process 40 to 50 bags per hour; they are operational 98% of the time, and they are 99.7% accurate in identifying explosive materials on checked bags. At this time, ETD machines have not been federally certified, but Mr. Sheldon believes that they will soon be an integral part of national airport security systems.
Task 6: Modify your EDS models to incorporate the use of ETD machines and determine how many ETD machines are needed for Airports A & B and if the schedules need to be changed. Since this information may affect national level decisions, write a memo to the Director of Homeland Security and the Director of TSA with a technical analysis of this enhanced screening policy. Is the cost of such a policy justified in light of the value that it provides? Should the ETDs replace any of the EDS devices?
Task 7: The Director of Homeland Security must also decide how to best fund future scientific research programs. Use your EDS/ETD model to examine the possible effect of changes in the device technology, cost, accuracy, speed, and operational reliability. Include recommendations for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research areas that will have the biggest impact on security system performance. Add your recommendation to the memo prepared in Task 7.
Appendix A Technical Information Sheet (TIS)
Table 1
Peak Hour Flight Departures for Airports A and B
Note: On
average, 2% of flights are cancelled each day
| Flight Type | Number of Seats on Each Flight | Airport A Number of Flights of Each Type | Airport B Number of Flights of Each Type |
| 1 | 34 | 10 | 8 |
| 2 | 46 | 4 | 6 |
| 3 | 85 | 3 | 7 |
| 4 | 128 | 3 | 5 |
| 5 | 142 | 19 | 9 |
| 6 | 194 | 5 | 10 |
| 7 | 215 | 1 | 2 |
| 8 | 350 | 1 | 1 |
Although all the flights in Table 1 depart during a peak hour, their actual departure times are set by the airline when designing their flight schedule. A flight cannot depart until all its checked bags are screened using an EDS. The airline has the flexibility to schedule their flights during the peak hour to avoid undesirable flight delays due to unscreened bags.
Historical data indicates that flights with 85 or fewer seats typically fly with between 70% and 100% of their seats occupied. Flights with between 128 and 215 seats typically fly with between 60% and 100% of their seats occupied. Flights with 350 seats typically fly with between 50% and 100% of their seats occupied. Passengers typically arrive for their flight between forty-five minutes and two hours prior to their scheduled departure time. For flights other than “shuttle” service, airlines claim that 20% of the passengers do not check any luggage, 20% check one bag, and the remaining passengers check two bags.
Preliminary estimates indicate that it will cost $100,000 to modify existing infrastructure (reinforced flooring, etc.) to install each EDS at Airport A and $80,000 to install each EDS at Airport B.
2002 A - Wind and Waterspray
An ornamental fountain in a large open plaza surrounded by buildings squirts water high into the air. On gusty days, the wind blows spray from the fountain onto passersby. The water-flow from the fountain is controlled by a mechanism linked to an anemometer (which measures wind speed and direction) located on top of an adjacent building. The objective of this control is to provide passersby with an acceptable balance between an attractive spectacle and a soaking: The harder the wind blows, the lower the water volume and height to which the water is squirted, hence the less spray falls outside the pool area.
Your task is to devise an algorithm which uses data provided by the anemometer to adjust the water-flow from the fountain as the wind conditions change.
2002 B - Airline Overbooking
You're all packed and ready to go on a trip to visit your best friend in New York City. After you check in at the ticket counter, the airline clerk announces that your flight has been overbooked. Passengers need to check in immediately to determine if they still have a seat.
Historically, airlines know that only a certain percentage of passengers
who have made reservations on a particular flight will actually take that
flight. Consequently, most airlines overbook-that is, they take more
reservations than the capacity of the aircraft. Occasionally, more passengers
will want to take a flight than the capacity of the plane leading to one or more
passengers being bumped and thus unable to take the flight for which they had
reservations.
Airlines deal with bumped passengers in various ways. Some are given nothing, some are booked on later flights on other airlines, and some are given some kind of cash or airline ticket incentive.
Consider the overbooking issue in light of the current situation:
Less
flights by airlines from point A to point B
Heightened security at and around
airports
Passengers' fear
Loss of billions of dollars in revenue by
airlines to date
Build a mathematical model that examines the effects that different overbooking schemes have on the revenue received by an airline company in order to find an optimal overbooking strategy, i.e., the number of people by which an airline should overbook a particular flight so that the company's revenue is maximized. Insure that your model reflects the issues above, and consider alternatives for handling "bumped" passengers. Additionally, write a short memorandum to the airline's CEO summarizing your findings and analysis.
2002 I - Scrub Lizards
The Florida scrub lizard is a small, gray or gray-brown lizard that lives throughout upland sandy areas in the Central and Atlantic coast regions of Florida. The Florida Committee on Rare and Endangered Plants classified the scrub lizard as endangered.
You will find a fact sheet on the Florida Scrub Lizard at http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/icm/2002problem/scrublizard.pdf
The long-term survival of the Florida scrub lizard is dependent upon preservation of the proper spatial configuration and size of scrub habitat patches.
Task 1: Discuss factors that may contribute to the loss of appropriate habitat for scrub lizards in Florida. What recommendations would you make to the state of Florida to preserve these habitats and discuss obstacles to the implementation of your recommendations?
Task 2: Utilize the data provided in Table 1 to estimate the value for Fa (the average fecundity of adult lizards); Sj (the survivorship of juvenile lizards- between birth and the first reproductive season); and Sa (the average adult survivorship).
Table 1
Summary data for a cohort of scrub lizards captured and followed for 4 consecutive years. Hatchling lizards (age 0) do not produce eggs during the summer they are born. Average clutch size for all other females is proportional to body size according to the function y = 0.21*(SVL)-7.5, where y is the clutch size and SVL is the snout-to-vent length in mm.
|
Year |
Age |
Total Number Living |
Number of Living Females |
Avg. Female Size (mm) |
|
1 |
0 |
972 |
495 |
30.3 |
|
2 |
1 |
180 |
92 |
45.8 |
|
3 |
2 |
20 |
11 |
55.8 |
|
4 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
56.0 |
Task 3: It has been conjectured that the parameters Fa , Sj , and Sa , are related to the size and amount of open sandy area of a scrub patch. Utilize the data provided in Table 2 to develop functions that estimate Fa, Sj , and Sa for different patches. In addition, develop a function that estimates C, the carrying capacity of scrub lizards for a given patch.
Table 2
Summary data for 8 scrub patches including vital rate data for scrub lizards. Annual female fecundity (Fa), juvenile survivorship (Sj), and adult survivorship (Sa) are presented for each patch along with patch size and the amount of open sandy habitat.
|
Patch |
Patch Size (ha) |
Sandy Habitat (ha) |
Fa |
Sj |
Sa |
Density (lizards/ha) |
|
a |
11.31 |
4.80 |
5.6 |
0.12 |
0.06 |
58 |
|
b |
35.54 |
11.31 |
6.6 |
0.16 |
0.10 |
60 |
|
c |
141.76 |
51.55 |
9.5 |
0.17 |
0.13 |
75 |
|
d |
14.65 |
7.55 |
4.8 |
0.15 |
0.09 |
55 |
|
e |
63.24 |
20.12 |
9.7 |
0.17 |
0.11 |
80 |
|
f |
132.35 |
54.14 |
9.9 |
0.18 |
0.14 |
82 |
|
g |
8.46 |
1.67 |
5.5 |
0.11 |
0.05 |
40 |
|
h |
278.26 |
84.32 |
11.0 |
0.19 |
0.15 |
115 |
Task 4: There are many animal studies that indicate that food, space, shelter, or even reproductive partners may be limited within a habitat patch causing individuals to migrate between patches. There is no conclusive evidence on why scrub lizards migrate. However, about 10 percent of juvenile lizards do migrate between patches and this immigration can influence the size of the population within a patch. Adult lizards apparently do not migrate. Utilizing the data provided in the histogram below estimate the probability of lizards surviving the migration between any two patches i and patch j.
Histogram
Migration data for juvenile lizards marked, released, and recaptured up to 6 months later. Surveys for recapture were conducted up to 750m from release sites.
Task 5: Develop a model to estimate the overall population size of scrub lizards for the landscape given in Table 3. Also, determine which patches are suitable for occupation by scrub lizards and which patches would not support a viable population.
Patch size and amount of open sandy habitat for a landscape of 29 patches located on the Avon Park Air Force Range. See:
http://www.comap.com/undergraduate/contests/icm/2002problem/map.jpg
for a map of the landscape.
|
Patch Identification |
Patch Size (ha) |
Sandy Habitat (ha) |
|
1 |
13.66 |
5.38 |
|
2 |
32.74 |
11.91 |
|
3 |
1.39 |
0.23 |
|
4 |
2.28 |
0.76 |
|
5 |
7.03 |
3.62 |
|
6 |
14.47 |
4.38 |
|
7 |
2.52 |
1.99 |
|
8 |
5.87 |
2.49 |
|
9 |
22.27 |
8.44 |
|
10 |
19.25 |
7.58 |
|
11 |
11.31 |
4.80 |
|
12 |
74.35 |
19.15 |
|
13 |
21.57 |
7.52 |
|
14 |
15.50 |
2.82 |
|
15 |
35.54 |
11.31 |
|
16 |
2.93 |
1.15 |
|
17 |
47.21 |
10.73 |
|
18 |
1.67 |
0.13 |
|
19 |
9.80 |
2.23 |
|
20 |
39.31 |
7.15 |
|
21 |
2.23 |
0.78 |
|
22 |
3.73 |
1.02 |
|
23 |
8.46 |
1.67 |
|
24 |
3.89 |
1.89 |
|
25 |
1.33 |
1.11 |
|
26 |
0.85 |
0.79 |
|
27 |
8.75 |
5.30 |
|
28 |
9.77 |
6.22 |
|
29 |
13.45 |
4.69 |
TASK 6: It has been determined from aerial photographs that vegetation density increases by about 6% a year within the Florida scrub areas. Please make a recommendation on a policy for controlled burning.
2001 A - Choosing a Bicycle Wheel
Cyclists have different types of wheels they can use on their bicycles. The two basic types of wheels are those constructed using wire spokes and those constructed of a solid disk (see Figure 1) The spoked wheels are lighter, but the solid wheels are more aerodynamic. A solid wheel is never used on the front for a road race but can be used on the rear of the bike.
Professional cyclists look at a racecourse and make an educated guess as to what kind of wheels should be used. The decision is based on the number and steepness of the hills, the weather, wind speed, the competition, and other considerations. The director sportif of your favorite team would like to have a better system in place and has asked your team for information to help determine what kind of wheel should be used for a given course.
Figure 1: A solid wheel is shown on the left and a spoked wheel is shown on the right.
The director sportif needs specific information to help make a decision and has asked your team to accomplish the tasks listed below. For each of the tasks assume that the same spoked wheel will always be used on the front but there is a choice of wheels for the rear.
- Task 1. Provide a table giving the wind speed at which the power required for a solid rear wheel is less than for a spoked rear wheel. The table should include the wind speeds for different road grades starting from zero percent to ten percent in one percent increments. (Road grade is defined to be the ratio of the total rise of a hill divided by the length of the road. If the hill is viewed as a triangle, the grade is the sine of the angle at the bottom of the hill.) A rider starts at the bottom of the hill at a speed of 45 kph, and the deceleration of the rider is proportional to the road grade. A rider will lose about 8 kph for a five percent grade over 100 meters.
- Task 2. Provide an example of how the table could be used for a specific time trial course.
- Task 3. Determine if the table is an adequate means for deciding on the wheel configuration and offer other suggestions as to how to make this decision.
2001 B - Escaping a Hurricane's Wrath (An Ill Wind...)
Evacuating the coast of South Carolina ahead of the predicted landfall of Hurricane Floyd in 1999 led to a monumental traffic jam. Traffic slowed to a standstill on Interstate I-26, which is the principal route going inland from Charleston to the relatively safe haven of Columbia in the center of the state. What is normally an easy two-hour drive took up to 18 hours to complete. Many cars simply ran out of gas along the way. Fortunately, Floyd turned north and spared the state this time, but the public outcry is forcing state officials to find ways to avoid a repeat of this traffic nightmare.
The principal proposal put forth to deal with this problem is the reversal of traffic on I-26, so that both sides, including the coastal-bound lanes, have traffic headed inland from Charleston to Columbia. Plans to carry this out have been prepared (and posted on the Web) by the South Carolina Emergency Preparedness Division. Traffic reversal on principal roads leading inland from Myrtle Beach and Hilton Head is also planned.
A simplified map of South Carolina is shown. Charleston has approximately 500,000 people, Myrtle Beach has about 200,000 people, and another 250,000 people are spread out along the rest of the coastal strip. (More accurate data, if sought, are widely available.)
The interstates have two lanes of traffic in each direction except in the metropolitan areas where they have three. Columbia, another metro area of around 500,000 people, does not have sufficient hotel space to accommodate the evacuees (including some coming from farther north by other routes), so some traffic continues outbound on I-26 towards Spartanburg; on I-77 north to Charlotte; and on I-20 east to Atlanta. In 1999, traffic leaving Columbia going northwest was moving only very slowly. Construct a model for the problem to investigate what strategies may reduce the congestion observed in 1999. Here are the questions that need to be addressed:
- Under what conditions does the plan for turning the two coastal-bound lanes of I-26 into two lanes of Columbia-bound traffic, essentially turning the entire I-26 into one-way traffic, significantly improve evacuation traffic flow?
- In 1999, the simultaneous evacuation of the state's entire coastal region was ordered. Would the evacuation traffic flow improve under an alternative strategy that staggers the evacuation, perhaps county-by-county over some time period consistent with the pattern of how hurricanes affect the coast?
- Several smaller highways besides I-26 extend inland from the coast. Under what conditions would it improve evacuation flow to turn around traffic on these?
- What effect would it have on evacuation flow to establish more temporary shelters in Columbia, to reduce the traffic leaving Columbia?
- In 1999, many families leaving the coast brought along their boats, campers, and motor homes. Many drove all of their cars. Under what conditions should there be restrictions on vehicle types or numbers of vehicles brought in order to guarantee timely evacuation?
- It has been suggested that in 1999 some of the coastal residents of Georgia and Florida, who were fleeing the earlier predicted landfalls of Hurricane Floyd to the south, came up I-95 and compounded the traffic problems. How big an impact can they have on the evacuation traffic flow? Clearly identify what measures of performance are used to compare strategies. Required: Prepare a short newspaper article, not to exceed two pages, explaining the results and conclusions of your study to the public.
Clearly identify what measures of performance are used to compare strategies.
Required: Prepare a short newspaper article, not to exceed two pages, explaining the results and conclusions of your study to the public.
2001 I - Our Waterways - An Uncertain Future
Researchers are attempting to identify the environmental variables related to the zebra mussel infestation in North American waterways. The relevant factors that may limit or prevent the spread of the zebra mussel are uncertain. You will have access to some reference data to include listings of several chemicals and substances in the water system that may affect the spread of the zebra mussel throughout waterways. Additionally, you can assume individual zebra mussels grow at a rate of 15 millimeters per year with a life span between 4 - 6 years. The typical mussel can filter 1 liter of water each day.
Requirement A : Discuss environmental factors that could influence the spread of zebra mussels.
Requirement B :
Utilizing the chemical data provided at:
http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeAChem1.xls,
and the mussel population data provided
at:
http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeAPopulation1.xls
model
the population growth of zebra mussels in Lake A. Be sure to review the Information about
the collection of the zebra mussel data.
Requirement C :
Utilizing additional data on Lake A from another scientist provided at :
http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeAChem2.xls
and additional mussel
population data provided at:
http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeAPopulation2.xls
corroborate the reasonableness of your model from Requirement B. As a
result of this additional data, adjust your earlier model. Analyze the
performance of your model. Discuss the sensitivity of your model.
Requirement D : Utilizing the Chemical data from two lakes (Lake B and Lake C) in the United States provided at http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeB.xls and http://www.comap/undergraduate/contests/icm/imagesdata/LakeC.xls determine if these lakes are vulnerable to the spread of zebra mussels. Discuss your prediction.
Requirement E: The community in the vicinity of Lake B (in requirement D) is considering specific policies for the de-icing of roadways near the lake during the winter season. Provide guidance to the local government officials regarding a policy on “de-icing agents.” In your guidance include predictions on the long-term impact of de-icing on the zebra mussel population.
Requirement F: It has been recommended by a local community in the United States to introduce round goby fish. Zebra mussels are not often eaten by native fish species so they represent a dead end ecologically. However, round gobies greater than 100 mm feed almost exclusively on zebra mussels. Ironically, because of habitat destruction, the goby is endangered in its native habitat of the Black and Caspian Seas in Russia. In addition to your technical report, include a carefully crafted report (3-page maximum) written explicitly for the local community leaders that responds to their recommendation to introduce the round goby. Also suggest ways to help reduce the growth of the mussel within and among waterways.
Information about the collection of the zebra mussel data
The developmental state of the Zebra mussel is categorized by
three stages: veligers (larvae), settling juveniles, and
adults. Veligers (microscopic zebra mussel larvae) are
free-swimming, suspended in the water for one to three weeks, after which they
begin searching for a hard surface to attach to and begin their adult life.
Looking for zebra mussel veligers is difficult because they are not easily
visible by the naked eye. Settled juvenile zebra mussels can be felt on
smooth surfaces like boats and motors. An advanced zebra mussel infestation can
cover a surface, even forming thick mats sometimes reaching very high densities.
The density of juveniles was determined along the lake using three 15X15 cm
settling plates. The top plate remained in the water for the entire sampling
season (S - seasonal) to estimate seasonal accumulation. The middle
and bottom plates are collected after specific periods (A – alternating )
of time denoted by “Lake Days” in the data files.
The settling plates are placed under the microscope and all juveniles on the undersides of the plate are counted and densities are reported as juveniles/m2.
2000 A - Air Traffic Control
To improve safety and reduce air traffic controller workload, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) is considering adding software to the air traffic control system that would automatically detect potential aircraft flight path conflicts and alert the controller. To that end, an analysit at the FAA has posed the following problems.
Requirement A: Given two airplanes flying in space, when should the air traffic controller consider the objects to be too close and to require intervention?
Requirement B: And airspace sector is the section of three-dimensional airspace that one air traffic controller controls. Given any airspace sector, how do we measure how complex it is from an air traffic workload perspective? To what extent is complexity determined by the number of aircraft simultaneously passing through that sector
- at any one instant?
- during any given interval of time?
- during a particular time of day?
In addition to the guidelines for your report, write a summary (no more than two pages) that the FAA analyst can present to Jane Garvey, the FAA Administrator, to defend your conclusions.
2000 B - Radio Channel Assignments
We seek to model the assignment of radio channels to a symmetric network of transmitter locations over a large planar area, so as to avoid interference. One basic approach is to partition the region into regular hexagons in a grix (honeycomb-style), as shown in Figure 1, where a transmitter is located at the center of each hexagon.An interval of the frequency spectrum is to be alloted for transmitter frequencies. The interval will be divided into regularly spaced channels, which we represent by integers 1,2,3, ... . Each transmitter wil be assigned one positive integer channel. The same channel can be used at many locations, provided that interference from nearby transmitters is avoided.
Our goal is to minimize the width of the interval in the frequency spectrum that is needed to assugn channels subject to some constraints. This is achieved with the concept of a span. The span is the minimum, over all assignments satisfying the constraints, of the largest channel used at any location. It is not required that every channel smaller than the span be used in an assignment that attains the span.
Let s be the length of a side of one of the hexagons. We concentrate on the case that there are two levels of interference.
Requirement A: There are several contrainsts on the frequency assignments. First, no two transmitters within distance 4s of each other can be given the same channel. Second, due to spectral spreading, transmitters within distance 2s of each other must not be given the same or adjacent channels: Their channels must differ by at least 2. Under these contraints, what can we say about the span in Figure 1?
Requirement B: Repeat Requirement A, assuming the grid in the example spreads arbitrarily far in all directions.
Requirement C: Repeat Requirements A and B, except assume now more generally that channels for transmitters within distance 2s differ by at least some given integer k, while those at distance at most 4s must still differ by at least one. What cna we say about the span and about efficient strategies for designing assignments, as a function of k?
Requirement D: Consider generalizations of the problem, such as several levels of interference or irregular transmitter placements. What other factors may be important to consider?
Requirement E: Write an article (no more than 2 pages) for the local newspaper explaining your findings.
2000 I - Elephants: When is Enough, Enough?
"Ultimately, if a habitat is undesirably changed by elephants, then their removal should be considered -even by culling." National Geographic (Earth Almanac) --December 1999A large National Park in South Africa contains approximately 11,000 elephants. Management policy requires a healthy environment that can maintain a stable herf of 11,000 elephants. Each year park rangers count the elephant population. During the past 20 years whole herds have been removed to keep the population as close to 11,000 as possible. The process involved shooting (for the most part) and occasionally relocating approximately 600 to 800 elephants per year.
Recently, there has been a public outcry against the shooting of these elephants. In addition, it is no longer feasible to relocate even a small population of elephants each year. A contraceptive dart, however, has been developed that can prevent a mature elephant cow from conceiving for a period of two years.
Here is some information about eh elephants in the Park:
- There is very little emigration of immigration of elephants.
- The gender ratio is very close to 1:1 and control measures have endeavored to maintain parity.
- The gender ratio of newborn calves is also about 1:1. Twins are born about 1.35% of the time.
- Cows first conceive between the ages of 10 and 12 and produce, on average, a calf every 3.5 years until they reach an age of about 60. Gestation is approximately 22 months.
- The contraceptive dart causes an elephant cow to come into oestrus every month (but not conceiving). Elephants usually have courtship only once in 3.5 years, so the monthly cycle can cause additional stress.
- A cow can be darted every year without additional detrimental effects. A mature elephant cow will not be able to conceive for 2 years after the last darting.
- Between 70% and 80% of newborn calves survive to age 1 year. Thereafter, the survival rate is uniform across all ages and is very high (over 95%), until about age 60; it is a good assumption that elephants die before reading age 70.
- There is no hunting and negligible poaching in the Park.
Your overall task is to develop and use models to investigate how the contraceptive dart might be used for population control. Specifically:
Task 1: Develop and use a model to speculate about the likely survival rate for elephants aged 2 to 60. Also speculate about the current age structure of the elephant population.
Task 2: Estimate how many cows would need to be darted each year to keep the population fixed at approximately 11,000 elephants. Show how the uncertainty in the data at your disposal affects your estimate. Comment on any changes in the age structure of the population and how this might affect tourists. (You may want to look ahead about 30-60 years.)
Task 3: If it were feasible to relocate between 50 and 300 elephants per year, how would this reduce the number of elephants to be darted? Comment on the trade-off between darting and relocation.
Task 4: Some opponents of darting argue that if there were a sudden loss of a large number of elephants (due to disease or uncontrolled poaching), even if darting stopped immediately, the ability of the population to grow again would be seriously impeded. Investigate and respond to this concer.
Task 5: The management in the Park is skeptical about modeling. In particular, they argue that a lack of complete data makes a mockery of any attempt to use models to guide their decision. In addition to your technical report, include a carefully crafted report (3-page maximum) written explicitly for the park management that responds to their concerns and provides advice. Also suggest ways to increase the park managers confidence in your model and your conclusions.
Task 6: If your model works, other elephant parks in Africa would be interested in using it. Prepare a darting plan for parks of various sizes (300-25,000 elephants), with slightly different survival rates and transportation possibilities.
1999 A - Deep Impact
For some time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been considering the consequences of a large asteroid impact on the earth.
As part of this effort, your team has been asked to consider the effects of such an impact were the asteroid to land in Antarctica. There are concerns that an impact there could have considerably different consequences than one striking elsewhere on the planet.
You are to assume that an asteroid is on the order of 1000 m in diameter, and that it strikes the Antarctic continent directly at the South Pole.
Your team has been asked to provide an assessment of the impact of such an asteroid. In particular, NASA would like an estimate of the amount and location of likely human casualties from this impact, an estimate of the damage done to the food production regions in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, and an estimate of possible coastal flooding caused by large-scale melting of the Antarctic polar ice sheet.
1999 B - Unlawful Assembly
Many public facilities have signs in rooms used for public gatherings which state that it is "unlawful" for the rooms to be occupied by more than a specified number of people. Presumably, this number is based on the speed with which people in the room could be evacuated from the room's exits in case of an emergency. Similarly, elevators and other facilities often have "maximum capacities" posted.
Develop a mathematical model for deciding what number to post on such a sign as being the "lawful capacity". As part of your solution discuss criteria, other than public safety in the case of a fire or other emergency, that might govern the number of people considered "unlawful" to occupy the room (or space). Also, for the model that you construct, consider the differences between a room with movable furniture such as a cafeteria (with tables and chairs), a gymnasium, a public swimming pool, and a lecture hall with a pattern of rows and aisles. You may wish to compare and contrast what might be done for a variety of different environments: elevator, lecture hall, swimming pool, cafeteria, or gymnasium. Gatherings such as rock concerts and soccer tournaments may present special conditions.
Apply your model to one or more public facilities at your institution (or neighboring town). Compare your results with the stated capacity, if one is posted. If used, your model is likely to be challenged by parties with interests in increasing the capacity. Write an article for the local newspaper defending your analysis.
1998 A - MRI Scanners
IntroductionIndustrial and medical diagnostic machines known as Magnetic Resonance Imagers (MRI) scan a three-dimensional object such as a brain, and deliver their results in the form of a three-dimensional array of pixels. Each pixel consists of one number indicating a color or a shade of gray that encodes a measure of water concentration in a small region of the scanned object at the location of the pixel. For instance, 0 can picture high water concentration in black (ventricles, blood vessels), 128 can picture a low water density in white (lipid-right white matter consisting of myelinated axons). Such MRI scanners also include facilities to pictures on a screen any horizontal or vertical slide through the three-dimensional array (slices are parallel to any of the three Cartesian coordinate axes).
Algorithms for picturing slices through oblique planes, however, are proprietary. Current algorithms are limited in terms of the angles and parameter options available; are implemented only on heavily used dedicated workstations; lack input capabilities for marking points in the picture before slicing; and tend to blur and ``feather out'' sharp boundaries between the original pixels.
A more faithful, flexible algorithm implemented on a personal computer would be useful
- for planning minimally invasive treatments,
- for calibrating the MRI machines,
- for investigating structures oriented obliquely in space, such as post-mortem tissue sections in animal research,
- for enabling cross-sections at any angle through a brain atlas consisting of black-and-white line drawings.
Problem
Design and test an algorithm that produces sections of three-dimensional arrays by planes in any orientation in space, preserving the original gray-scale values as closely as possible.
Data Sets
The typical data set consists of a three-dimensional array A of numbers A(i,j,k) which indicates the density A(i,j,k) of the object at the location (x,y,z)_{ijk}. Typically, A(i,j,k) can range from 0 through 255. In most applications, the data set is quite large. Teams should design data sets to test and demonstrate their algorithms. The data sets should reflect conditions likely to be of diagnostic interest. Teams should also characterize data sets that limit the effectiveness of their algorithms.
Summary
The algorithm must produce a picture of the slice of the three-dimensional array by a plane in space. The plane can have any orientation and any location in space. (The plane can miss some or all data points). The result of the algorithm should be a model of the density of the scanned object over the selected plane.
1998 B - Grade Inflation
BackgroundSome college administrators are concerned about the grading at A Better Class (ABC) college. On average, the faculty at ABC have been giving out high grades (the average grade now given out is an A-), and it is impossible to distinguish between the good and mediocre students. The terms of a very generous scholarship only allow the top 10% of the students to be funded, so a class ranking is required.
The dean had the thought of comparing each student to the other students in each class, and using this information to build up a ranking. For example, if a student obtains an A in a class in which all students obtain an A, then this student is only ``average'' in this class. On the other hand, if a student obtains the only A is a class, then that student is clearly ``above average.'' Combining information from several classes might allow students to be placed in deciles (top 10%, next 10%, etc.) across the college.
Problem
Assuming that the grades given out are (A+, A, A-, B+,...), can the dean's idea be made to work? Assuming that the grades given out are only (A,B,C,...), can the dean's idea be made to work? Can any other schemes produce a desired ranking? A concern is that the grade in a single class could change many student's deciles. Is this possible?
Data Sets
Teams should design data sets to test and demonstrate their algorithms. Teams should characterize data sets that limit the effectiveness of their algorithms.
1997 A - The Velociraptor Problem
The velociraptor, Velociraptor mongoliensis, was a predatory dinosaur that lived during the late Cretaceous period, approximately 75 million years ago. Paleontologists think that it was a very tenacious hunter, and may have hunted in pairs of larger packs. Unfortunately, there is no way to oversee its hunting behavior in the wild as can be done with modern mammalian predators. A group of paleontologists has approached our team and asked for help in modeling the hunting behavior of the velociraptor. They hope to compare your results with field data reported by biologists studying the behaviors of lions, tigers, and similar predatory animals.
The average adult velociraptor was 3 meters long with a hip height of 0.5 meters and an approximate mass of 45 kg. It is estimated that the animal could run extremely fast, at speeds of 60 km/hr., for about 15 seconds. After the initial burst of speed, the animal needed to stop and recover from a buildup of lactic acid in its muscles.
Suppose the velociraptor preyed on Thescelosaurus neglectus, a herbivorous biped approximately the same size as the velociraptor. A biomechanical analysis of a fossilized thescelosaurus indicates that it could run at a speed of about 50 km/hr. for long periods of time.
Part 1. Assuming the velociraptor is a solitary hunter, design a mathematical model that describes a hunting strategy for a single velociraptor stalking and chasing a single thescelosaurus as well as the evasive strategy of the prey. Assume that the thescelosaurus can always detect the velociraptor when it comes within 15 meters, but may detect the predator at even greater ranges (up to 50 meters) depending upon the habitat and weather conditions. Additionally, due to its physical structure and strength, the velociraptor has a limited turning radius when running at full speed. This radius is estimated to be three times the animal's hip height. On the other hand, the thescelosaurus is extremely agile and has a turning radius of 0.5 meters.
Part 2. Assuming more realistically that the velociraptor hunted in pairs, design a new model that describes a hunting strategy for two velociraptors stalking and chasing a single thescelosaurus as well as the evasive strategy of the prey. Use the other assumptions given in Part 1.
1997 B - Mix Well for Fruitful Discussions
Small group meetings for the discussion of important issues, particularly long- range planning, are gaining popularity. It is believed that large groups discourage productive discussion and that a dominant personality will usually control and direct the discussion. Thus, in corporate board meetings the board will meet in small groups to discuss issue before meeting as a whole. These smaller groups still run the risk of control by a dominant personality. In an attempt to reduce this danger it is common to schedule several sessions with a different mix of people in each group.
A meeting of An Tostal Corporation will be attended by 29 Board Members of which nine are in-house members (i.e., corporate employees). The meeting is to be an all-day affair with three sessions scheduled for the morning and four for the afternoon. Each session will take 45 minutes, beginning on the hours from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., with lunch scheduled at noon. Each morning session will consist of six discussion groups with each discussion group led by one of the corporation's six senior officers. None of these officers are board members. Thus each senior officer will lead three different discussion groups. The senior officers will not be involved in the afternoon sessions and each of these sessions will consist of only four different discussion groups.
The president of the corporation wants a list of board-member assignments to discussion groups for each of the seven sessions. The assignments should achieve as much of a mix of the members as much as possible. The ideal assignment would have each board member with each other board member in a discussion group the same number of times while minimizing common membership of groups for the different sessions. The assignments should also satisfy the following criteria:
- For the morning sessions, no board member should be in the same senior officer's discussion group twice.
- No discussion group should contain a disproportionate number of in-house members.
Give a list of assignments for members 1-9 and 10-29 and officers 1-6. Indicate how well the criteria in the previous paragraphs are met. Since it is possible that some board members will cancel at the last minute or that some not scheduled will show up, an algorithm that the secretary could use to adjust the assignments with an hour's notice would be appreciated. It would be ideal if the algorithm could also be used to make assignments for future meetings involving different levels of participation for each type of attendee.
1996 A - Submarine Tracking
The world's oceans contain an ambient noise field. Seismic disturbances, surface shipping, and marine mammals are sources that, in different frequency ranges, contribute to this field. We wish to consider how this ambient noise might be used to detect large maving objects, e.g., submarines located below the ocean surface. Assuming that a submarine makes no intrinsic noise, develop a method for detecting the presence of a moving submarine, its speed, its size, and its direction of travel, using only information obtained by measuring changes to the ambient noise field. Begin with noise at one fixed frequency and amplitude.
1996 B - Paper Judging
When determining the winner of a competition like the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, there are generally a large number of papers to judge. Let's say there are P=100 papers. A group of J judges is collected to accomplish the judging. Funding for the contest contrains both the number of judges that can be obtained and the amount of time they can judge. For example if P=100, then J=8 is typical.
Ideally, each judge would read each paper and rank-order them, but there are too many papers for this. Instead, there will be a number of screening rounds in which each judge will read some papers and give them scores. Then some selection scheme is used to reduce the number of papers under consideration: If the papers are rank-ordered, then the bottom 30% that each judge rank-orders could be rejected. Alternatively, if the judges do not rank order the papers, but instead give them numerical scores (say, from 1 to 100), then all the papers falling below some cut-off level could be rejected.
The new pool of papers is then passed back to the judges, and the process is repeated. A concern is that the total number of papers that each judge reads must be substantially less than P. The process is stopped when there are only W papers left. These are the winners. Typically for P=100, W=3.
Your task is to determine a selection scheme, using a combination of rank-ordering, numerical scoring, and other methods, by which the final W papers will include only papers from among the "best" 2W papers. (By "best," we assume that there is an absolute rank-ordering to which all judges would agree.) For example, the top three papers found by your method will consist entirely of papers from among the "best" six papers. Among all such methods, the one that requires each judge to read the least number of papers is desired.
Note the possibility of systematic bias in a numerical scoring scheme. For example, for a specific collection of papers, one judge could average 70 points, while another could average 80 points. How would you scale your scheme to accommodate for changes in the contest parameters (P, J, and W)?
1995 A - Helix Construction
A small biotechnological company must design, prove, program and test a mathematical algorithm to locate "in real time" all the intersections of a helix and a plane in general positions in space. Design, justify, program and test a method to compute all the intersections of a plane and a helix, both in general positions (at any locations and with any orientations) in space. A segment of the helix may represent, for example, a helicoidal suspension spring or a piece of tubing in a chemical or medical apparatus. Theoretical justification of the proposed algorithm is necessary to verify the solution from several points of view, for instance, through mathematical proofs of parts of the algorithm, and through tests of the final program with known examples. Such documentation and tests will be required by government agencies for medical use.
1995 B - Faculty Compensation
Aluacha Balaclava College, and undergraduate facility, has just hired a new Provost whose first priority is the institution of a fair and reasonable faculty-compensation plan. She has hired your consulting team to design a compensation system that reflects the following circumstances and principles: [Three paragraphs of details omitted] Design a new pay system, first without cost-of-living increases. Incorporate cost-of-living increases, and then finally, design a transition process for current faculty that will move all salaries towards your system without reducing anyone's salary. The Provost requires a detailed compensation system plan for implementation, as well as a brief, clear, executive summary outlining the model, its assumptions, strengths, weaknesses and expected results, which she can present to the Board and faculty. [A detailed table of current salaries is omitted.]
1994 A - Concrete Slab Floors
The U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is considering constructing dwellings of various sizes, ranging from individual houses to large apartment complexes. A principal concern is to minimize recurring costs to occupants, especially the costs of heating and cooling. The region in which the construction is to take place is temperate, with a moderate variation in temperature throughout the year.
Through special construction techniques, HUD engineers can build dwellings that do not need to rely on convection- that is, there is no need to rely on opening doors or windows to assist in temperature variation. The dwellings will be single-story, with concrete slab floors as the only foundation. You have been hired as a consultant to analyze the temperature variation in the concrete slab floor to determine if the temperature averaged over the floor surface can be maintained within a prescribed comfort zone throughout the year. If so, what size/shape of slabs will permit this?
Part 1, Floor Temperature: Consider the temperature variation in a concrete slab given that the ambient temperature varies daily within the ranges given Table 1. Assume that the high occurs at noon and the low at midnight. Determine if slabs can be designed to maintain a temperature averaged over the floor surface within the prescribed comfort zone considering radiation only. Initially, assume that the heat transfer into the dwelling is through the exposed perimeter of the slab and that the top and bottom of the slabs are insulated. Comment on the appropriateness and sensitivity of these assumptions. If you cannot find a solution that satisfies Table 1, can you find designs that satisfy a Table 1 that you propose?
| Ambient Temperature | Comfort Zone | |
| High | 85 | 76 |
| Low | 60 | 65 |
Part 2, Building Temperature: Analyze the practicality of the initial assumptions and extend the analysis to temperature variation within the single-story dwelling. Can the house be kept within the comfort zone?
Part 3, Cost of Construction: Suggest a design that considers HUD's objective of reducing or eliminating heating and cooling costs, considering construction restrictions and costs.
1994 B - Network Design
In your company, information is shared among departments on a daily basis. This information includes the previous day's sales statistics and current production guidance. It is important to get this information out as quickly as possible. [Network diagram (with 5 nodes and 7 capacitated edges) omitted.]
We are interested in scheduling transfers in an optimal way to minimize the total time it takes to complete them all. This minimum total time is called the makespan. Consider the three following situations for your company: [Three more network diagrams (on roughly 20 nodes each) omitted.]
1993 A - Optimal Composting
An environmentally conscious institutional cafeteria is recycling customers' uneaten food into compost by means of microorganisms. Each day, the cafeteria blends the leftover food into a slurry, mixes the slurry with crisp salad wastes from the kitchen and a small amount of shredded newspaper, and feeds the resulting mixture to a culture of fungi and soil bacteria, which digest slurry, greens, and papers into usable compost. The crisp green provide pockets of oxygen for the fungi culture, and the paper absorbs excess humidity. At times, however, the fungi culture is unable or unwilling to digest as much of the leftovers as customers leave; the cafeteria does not blame the chef for the fungi culture's lack of appetite. Also, the cafeteria has received offers for the purchase of large quantities of it compost. Therefore, the cafeteria is investigating ways to increase its production of compost. Since it cannot yet afford to build a new composting facility, the cafeteria seeks methods to accelerate the fungi culture's activity, for instance, by optimizing the fungi culture's environment (currently held at about 120 F and 100% humidity), or by optimizing the composition of the moisture fed to the fungi culture, or both.
Determine whether any relation exists between the proportions of slurry, greens, and paper in the mixture fed to the fungi culture, and the rate at which the fungi culture composts the mixture. if no relation exists, state so. otherwise, determine what proportions would accelerate the fungi culture's activity. In addition to the technical report following the format prescribed in the contest instructions, provide a one-page nontechnical recommendation for implementation for the cafeteria manager. Table 1 shows the composition of various mixtures in pounds of each ingredient kept in separate bins, and the time that it took the fungi to culture to compost the mixtures, from the date fed to the date completely composted [table omitted].
1993 B - Coal-Tipple Operations
The Aspen-Boulder Coal Company runs a loading facility consisting of a large coal tipple. When the coal trains arrive, they are loaded from the tipple. The standard coal train takes 3 hours to load, and the tipple's capacity is 1.5 standard trainloads of coal. Each day, the railroad sends three standard trains to the loading facility, and they arrive at any time between 5 A.M. and 8 P.M. local time. Each of the trains has three engines. If a train arrives and sits idle while waiting to be loaded, the railroad charges a special fee, called a demurrage. The fee is $5,000 per engine per hour. In addition, a high-capacity train arrives once a week every Thursday between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M. This special train has five engines and holds twice as much coal as a standard train. An empty tipple can be loaded directly from the mine to its capacity in six hours by a single loading crew. This crew (and its associated equipment) cost $9,000 per hour. A second crew can be called out to increase the loading rate by conducting an additional tipple-loading operation at the cost of $12,000 per hour. Because of safety requirements, during tipple loading no trains can be loaded. Whenever train loading is interrupted to load the tipple, demurrage charges are in effect.
The management of the Coal Company has asked you to determine the expected annual costs of this tipple's loading operations. Your analysis should include the following considerations:
- How often should the second crew be called out?
- What are the expected monthly demurrage costs?
- If the standard trains could be scheduled to arrive at precise times, what daily schedule would minimize loading costs? Would a third tipple-loading crew at $12,000 per hour reduce annual operations costs?
- Can this tipple support a fourth standard train every day?
1992 A - Air-Traffic-Control Radar Power
You are to determine the power to be radiated by an air-traffic-control radar at a major metropolitan airport. The airport authority wants to minimize the power of the radar consistent with safety and cost. The authority is constrained to operate with its existing antennae and receiver circuitry. The only option that they are considering is upgrading the transmitter circuits to make the radar more powerful. The question that you are to answer is what power (in watts) must be released by the radar to ensure detection of standard passenger aircraft at a distance of 100 kilometers.
1992 B - Emergency Power Restoration
Power companies serving coastal regions must have emergency response systems for power outages due to storms. Such systems require the input of data that allow the time and cost required for restoration to be estimated and the "value" of the outage judged by objective criteria. In the past, Hypothetical Electric Company (HECO) has been criticized in the media for its lack of a prioritization scheme.
You are a consultant to HECO power company. HECO possesses a computerized database with real time access to service calls that currently require the following information:
- time of report,
- type of requestor,
- estimated number of people affected, and
- location (x,y).
Cre sites are located at coordinates (0,0) and (40,40), where x and y are in miles. The region serviced by HECO is within -65 < x < 60 and -50 < y < 50. The region is largely metropolitan with an excellent road network. Crews must return to their dispatch site only at the beginning and end of shift. Company policy requires that no work be initiated until the storm leaves the area, unless the facility is a commuter railroad or hospital, which may be processed immediately if crews are available.
HECO has hired you to develop the objective criteria and schedule the work for the storm restoration requirements listed in Table 1 using their work force described in Table 2. Note that the first call was received at 4:20 A.M. and that the storm left the area at 6:00 A.M. Also note that many outages were not reported until much later in the day.
HECO has asked for a technical report for their purposes and an "executive summary" in laymen's terms that can be presented to the media. Further, they would like recommendations for the future. To determine your prioritized scheduling system, you will have to make additional assumptions. Detail those assumptions. In the future, you may desire additional data. If so, detail the information desired.
Table 1. Storm restoration requirements. (table incomplete)| Time | Location | Type | # Affected | Est Repair Time hrs |
| (-10,3) | Business (cable TV) | ? | 6 | |
| 5:30 | (3,3) | Residential | 20 | 7 |
| 5:35 | (20,5) | Business (hospital) | 240 | 8 |
| 5:55 | (-10,5) | Business (railroad sys.) | 25 wrkrs, 75,000 commuters | 5 |
| 6:00 | Storm leaves area | |||
| 6:05 | (13,30) | Residential | 45 | 2 |
| 6:06 | (5,20) | Area* | 2000 | 7 |
Table 2. Crew descriptions.
| Dispatch locations at (0,0) and (40,40). |
| Crews consist of three trained workers. |
| Crews report to the dispatch location only at the beginning and end of their shifts. |
| One crew is scheduled for duty at all times on jobs assigned to each dispatch location. These crews would normally be performing routine assignments. Until the "storm leaves the area," They can be dispatched for "emergencies" only. |
| Crews work 8 hour shifts. |
| There are six crew teams available at each location. |
| Crews can work only one overtime shift in a work day and receive time-and-a-half for overtime. |
1991 A - Water Tank Flow
Some state water-right agencies require from communities data on the rate of water use, in gallons per hour, and the total amount of water used each day. Many communities do not have equipment to measure the flow of water in or out of the municipal tank. Instead, they can measure only the level of water in the tank, within 0.5% accuracy, every hour. More importantly, whenever the level in the tank drops below some minimum level L, a pump fills the tank up to the maximum level, H; however, there is no measurement of the pump flow either. Thus, one cannot readily relate the level in the tank to the amount of water used while the pump is working, which occurs once or twice per day, for a couple of hours each time. Estimate the flow out of the tank f(t) at all times, even when the pump is working, and estimate the total amount of water used during the day. Table 1 gives real data, from an actual small town, for one day[ table omitted]. The table gives the time, in, since the first measurement, and the level of water in the tank, in hundredths of a foot. For example, after 3316 seconds, the depth of water in the tank reached 31.10 feet. The tank is a vertical circular cylinder, with a height of 40 feet and a diameter of 57 feet. Usually, the pump starts filling the tank when the level drops to about 27.00 feet, and the pump stops when the level rises back to about 35.50 feet.
1991 B - The Steiner Tree Problem
The cost for a communication line between two stations is proportional to the length of the line. The cost for conventional minimal spanning trees of a set of stations can often be cut by introducing "phantom" stations and then constructing a new Steiner tree. This device allows costs to be cut by up to 13.4% (= 1- sqrt(3/4)). Moreover, a network with n stations never requires more than n-2 points to construct the cheapest Steiner tree. Two simple cases are shown in Figure 1.For local networks, it often is necessary to use rectilinear or "checker-board" distances, instead of straight Euclidean lines. Distances in this metric are computed as shown in Figure 2.
Suppose you wish to design a minimum costs spanning tree for a local network with 9 stations. Their rectangular coordinates are: a(0,15), b(5,20), c(16,24), d(20,20), e(33,25), f(23,11), g(35,7), h(25,0) i(10,3). You are restricted to using rectilinear lines. Moreover, all "phantom" stations must be located at lattice points (i.e., the coordinates must be integers). The cost for each line is its length.
- Find a minimal cost tree for the network.
- Suppose each stations has a cost w*d^(3/2), where d=degree of the station. If w=1.2, find a minimal cost tree.
- Try to generalize this problem
1990 A - The Brain-Drug Problem
Researches on brain disorders test the effects of the new medical drugs -- for example, dopamine against Parkinson's disease -- with intracerebral injections. To this end, they must estimate the size and the sape of the spatial distribution of the drug after the injection, in order to estimate accurately the region of the brain that the drug has affected.The research data consist of the measurements of the amounts of drug in each of 50 cylindrical tissue samples (see Figure 1 and Table 1). Each cylinder has length 0.76 mm and diameter 0.66 mm. The centers of the parallel cylinders lie on a grid with mesh 1mm X 0.76mm X 1mm, so that the sylinders touch one another on their circular bases but not along their sides, as shown in the accompanying figure. The injection was made near the center of the cylinder with the highest scintillation count. Naturally, one expects that there is a drug also between the cylinders and outside the region covered by the samples.
Estimate the distribution in the region affected by the drug.
One unit represents a scintillation count, or 4.753e-13 mole of dopamine. For example, the table shows that the middle rear sylinder contails 28353 units.
Rear vertical section
| 164 | 442 | 1320 | 414 | 188 |
| 480 | 7022 | 14411 | 5158 | 352 |
| 2091 | 23027 | 28353 | 13138 | 681 |
| 789 | 21260 | 20921 | 11731 | 727 |
| 213 | 1303 | 3765 | 1715 | 453 |
| 163 | 324 | 432 | 243 | 166 |
| 712 | 4055 | 6098 | 1048 | 232 |
| 2137 | 15531 | 19742 | 4785 | 335 |
| 444 | 11431 | 14960 | 3182 | 301 |
| 294 | 2061 | 1036 | 258 | 188 |
1990 B - Snowplow Routing
The solid lines of the map (see Figure 1) represent paved two-lane county roads in a snow removal district in Wicomico County, Maryland [figure omitted]. The broken lines are state highways. After a snowfall, two plow-trucks are dispatched from a garage that is about 4 miles west of each of the two points (*) marked on the map. Find an efficient way to use the two trucks to sweep snow from the county roads. The trucks may use the state highways to access the county roads. Assume that the trucks neither break down nor get stuck and that the road intersections require no special plowing techniques.
1989 A - The Midge Classification Problem
Two species of midges, Af and Apf, have been identified by biologists Grogan and Wirth on the basis of antenna and wing length (see Figure 1). It is important to be able to classify a specimen as Af of Apf, given the antenna and wing length.- Given a midge that you know is species Af or Apf, how would you go about classifying it?
- Apply your method to three specimens with (antenna, wing) lengths (1.24,1.80),(1.28,1.84),(1.40,2.04).
- Assume that the species is a valuable pollinator and species Apf is a carrier of a debilitating disease. Would you modify your classification scheme and if so, how?
1989 B - Aircraft Queueing
A common procedure at airports is to assign aircraft (A/C) to runways on a first-come-first-served basis. That is, as soon as an A/C is ready to leave the gate ("push-back"), the pilot calls ground control and is added to the queue. Suppose that a control tower has access to a fast online database with the following information for each A/C:
- the time it is scheduled for pushback;
- the time it actually pushes back; the number of passengers who are scheduled to make a connection at the next stop, as well as the time to make that connection; and
- the schedule time of arrival at its next stop Assume that there are seven types of A/C with passenger capacities varying from 100 to 400 in steps of 50. Develop and analyze a mathematical model that takes into account both the travelers' and airlines' satisfaction.
1988 A - The Drug Runner Problem
Two listening posts 5.43 miles apart pick up a brief radio signal. The sensing devices were oriented at 110 degrees and 119 degrees, respectively, when the signal was detected; and they are accurate to within 2 degrees. The signal came from a region of active drug exchange, and it is inferred that there is a powerboat waiting for someone to pick up drugs. it is dusk, the weather is calm, and there are no currents. A small helicopter leaves from Post 1 and is able to fly accurately along the 110 degree angle direction. The helicopter's speed is three times the speed of the boat. The helicopter will be heard when it gets within 500 ft of the boat. This helicopter has only one detection device, a searchlight. At 200 ft, it can just illuminate a circular region with a radius of 25 ft.- Develop an optimal search method for the helicopter.
1988 B - Packing Railroad Flatcars
Two railroad flatcars are to be loaded with seven types of packing crates. The crates have the same width and height but varying thickness (t, in cm) and weight (w, in kg). Table 1 gives, for each crate, the thickness, weight, and number available [table omitted]. Each car has 10.2 meters of length available for packing the crates (like slices of toast) and can carry up to 40 metric tons. There is a special constraint on the total number of C_5, C_6, and C_7 crates because of a subsequent local trucking restriction: The total space (thickness) occupied by these crates must not exceed 302.7 cm. Load the two flatcars (see Figure 1) so as to minimize the wasted floor space [figure omitted].
1987 A - The Salt Storage Problem
For approximately 15 years, a Midwestern state has stored salt used on roads in the winter in circular domes. Figure 1 shows how salt has been stored in the past. The salt is brought into and removed from the domes by driving front-end loaders up ramps of salt leading into the domes. The salt is piled 25 to 30 ft high, using the buckets on the front-end loaders.Recently, a panel determined that this practice is unsafe. If the front-end loader gets too close to the edge of the salt pile, the salt might shift, and the loader could be thrown against the retaining walls that reinforce the dome. The panel recommended that if the salt is to be piled with the use of the loaders, then the piles should be restricted to a matimum height of 15 ft.
Construct a mathematical model for this situation and find a recommended maximum height for salt in the domes.
1987 B - Parking Lot Design
The owner of a paved, 100' by 200' , corner parking lot in a New England town hires you to design the layout, that is, to design how the ``lines are to be painted.'' You realize that squeezing as many cars into the lot as possible leads to right-angle parking with the cars aligned side by side. However, inexperienced drivers have difficulty parking their cars this way, which can give rise to expensive insurance claims. To reduce the likelihood of damage to parked vehicles, the owner might then have to hire expert drivers for ``valet parking.'' On the other hand, most drivers seem to have little difficulty in parking in one attempt if there is a large enough ``turning radius'' from the access lane. Of course, the wider the access lane, the fewer cars can be accommodated in the lot, leading to less revenue for the parking lot owner.
1986 A - Hydrographic Data
The table below gives the depth Z of water in feet for surface points with rectangular coordinates X, Y in yards [table of 14 data points omitted]. The depth measurements were taken at low tide. Your ship has a draft of five feet. What region should you avoid within the rectangle (75,200) x (-50, 150)?
| X | Y | Z |
| 129.0 | 7.5 | 4 |
| 140.0 | 141.5 | 8 |
| 108.5 | 28.0 | 6 |
| 88.0 | 147.0 | 8 |
| 185.5 | 22.5 | 6 |
| 195.0 | 137.5 | 8 |
| 105.5 | 85.5 | 8 |
| 157.5 | -6.5 | 9 |
| 107.5 | -81.0 | 9 |
| 77.0 | 3.0 | 8 |
| 162.0 | -66.5 | 9 |
| 162.0 | 84.0 | 4 |
| 117.5 | -35.5 | 9 |
1986 B - Emergency-Facilities Location
The township of Rio Rancho has hitherto not had its own emergency facilities. It has secured funds to erect two emergency facilities in 1986, each of which will combine ambulance, fire, and police services. Figure 1 indicates the demand [figure omitted], or number of emergencies per square block, for 1985. The "L" region in the north is an obstacle, while the rectangle in the south is a part with shallow pond. It takes an emergency vehicle an average of 15 seconds to go one block in the N-S direction and 20 seconds in the E-W direction. Your task is to locate the two facilities so as to minimize the total response time.
- Assume that the demand is concentrated at the center of the block and that the facilities will be located on corners.
- Assume that the demand is uniformly distributed on the streets bordering each block and that the facilities may be located anywhere on the streets.
1985 A - Animal Populations
Choose a fish or mammal for which appropriate data are available to model it accurately. Model the animal's natural interactions with its environment by expressing population levels of different groups in terms of the significant parameters of the environment. Then adjust the model to account for harvesting in a form consistent with the actual method by which the animal is harvested. Include any outside constraints imposed by food or space limitations that are supported by the data. Consider the value of the various quantities involved, the number harvested, and the population size itself, in order to devise a numerical quantity that represents the overall value of the harvest. Find a harvesting policy in terms of population size and time that optimizes the value of the harvest over a long period of time. Check that the policy optimizes that value over a realistic range of environmental conditions.
1985 B - Strategic Reserve Management
Cobalt, which is not produced in the US, is essential to a number of industries. (Defense accounted for 17% of the cobalt production in 1979.) Most cobalt comes from central Africa, a politically unstable region. The Strategic and Critical Materials Stockpiling Act of 1946 requires a cobalt reserve that will carry the US through a three-year war. The government built up a stockpile in the 1950s, sold most of it off in the early 1970s, and then decided to build it up again in the late 1970s, with a stockpile goal of 85.4 million pounds. About half of this stockpile had been acquired by 1982.
Build a mathematical model for managing a stockpile of the strategic metal cobalt. You will need to consider such questions as:
- How big should the stockpile be?
- At what rate should it be acquired?
- What is a reasonable price to pay for the metal?
- At what point should the stockpile be drawn down?
- At what rate should it be drawn down?
- At what price is it reasonable to sell the metal?
- How should it be allocated?
The government has projected a need ot 25 million pounds of cobalt in 1985.
The U.S. has about 100 million pounds of proven cobalt deposits. Production becomes economically feasible when the price reaches $22/lb (as occurred in 1981). It takes four years to get operations rolling, and thsn six million pounds per year can be produced.
In 1980, 1.2 million pounds of cobalt were recycled, 7% of total consumption.