How to Tackle the HiMCM 2020 “Best Summer Job” Modeling Challenge

American High School Mathematical Modeling Competition (HiMCM) is an international contest organized by COMAP since 1999, supported by NSF, INFORMS, MAA, and NCTM. It emphasizes team collaboration, real‑world problem solving, programming, and academic writing.

The competition is highly regarded and can strengthen university applications worldwide.

HiMCM 2020 A Problem – “The Best Summer Job”

Problem: Develop a model to help high‑school students evaluate and choose the best summer job, considering earnings, recreation time, work type (virtual, on‑site, sedentary or active), and personal preferences.

Tasks include:

Identify and describe quantitative or qualitative, deterministic or probabilistic factors relevant to summer‑job selection.

Construct a model or algorithm that uses these factors as inputs.

Test the model with at least ten fictional individuals and analyze the outcomes.

Propose a presentation format (e.g., webpage, app, newspaper article) for the model.

Problem Presentation and Analysis

Problem Statement

The 2020 A problem asks students to consider how a high‑schooler might choose a short‑term summer job for income or life experience, weighing factors such as pay, workload, flexibility, and personal interests.

Problem Analysis

Key background research topics include:

Reasons for seeking a summer job.

Factors to consider when choosing a job.

Available job types.

Job‑search platforms.

Effective collaboration tools (shared documents, mind‑mapping software) can help teams organize ideas and avoid duplication.

Online searches for “Summer Jobs for High School Student” yield many articles and job listings, providing useful data on job requirements, hours, and interests.

Typical factors extracted from research:

Interest in children or education – personal motivation.

Flexibility – ability to adapt to changing schedules.

Organizational skills and attention to detail – work quality.

Legal work‑hour limits – e.g., under‑18 workers may not exceed 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week.

These factors suggest the need for a quantitative method to evaluate job suitability, which is the core purpose of mathematical modeling.

Below are illustrative screenshots of collaborative tools and search results:

Having gathered background information, the next step is to build the core mathematical model, which will be detailed in subsequent articles.