NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio — The trigonometric functions written on Jake Lord’s classroom whiteboard could easily look like a foreign language to the non-math-savvy among us.
“In this sense, we are in pre-calculus and so we’re getting towards calculus,” the Lake Ridge Academy math teacher explained.
Lord teaches both classes, along with AP statistics, at the private K-12 school in North Ridgeville. The equations on his whiteboard could be considered a warm-up for three students he said have displayed an extraordinary math aptitude.
“I’ve never had students like these three, where math is their favorite thing to do, even outside of school,” he said.
Kisen Yao, Shirley You and Eric Shin recently beat out thousands of other students to advance to the finals of an international math competition.
“They are way past me. I don’t know that I’d be able to come to the solutions that they did,” Lord laughed.
The three friends share a passion for math.
“I think I like that math always has an answer,” said Shin.
The Lake Ridge Academy senior is an exchange student from South Korea. You and Yao are also exchange students from China. All three have spent their high school careers at the private school in North Ridgeville.
They said the excitement of their recent competition has been a highlight of their time abroad.
“I think this is one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had, not just because of the uniqueness of the competition and the results,” said Yao, a high school junior. “But also, it was a really awesome experience to work with my teammates and communicate and work through those fantastic problems.”
As the president of the school’s math club, Yao had the idea to enter the MathWorks Math Modeling Competition and enlist You and Shin.
“I kind of wanted to explore how math can be related to real life,” said You, also a junior at the school.
The M3 Challenge is an international math modeling competition. The competition’s work time spans a continuous 14-hour period, at the end of which teams submit a solution paper explaining their work and conclusions.
This year’s 770 teams used provided data to explore the rise of online gambling and its impact in the U.S. and U.K.
“How the money they lose during the gambling might affect their whole household. It was a really interesting problem,” said Shin.
The team initially received word that it had been selected as semi-finalists.
“That was good enough,” said You.
Then, on spring break, they found out their solutions were impressive enough to be among the top six finalist teams.
You said, “I was so surprised.”
On Sunday, the students will be flying to New York City to present their findings to a panel of professional mathematicians. The winning team will receive a $20,000 scholarship.
“Something like this is huge for their future,” Lord said.
All three students hope to attend U.S. colleges. After Shin graduates this spring, he will attend the University of Southern California. You said she hopes to attend UCLA. Yao’s dream school is MIT.
All three plan to study math-related fields.
Catherine Ross is the Lorain County reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow her on X @CatherineRossTV, on Facebook CatherineRossTV or email her at Catherine.Ross@wews.com.
