Kathleen McLane and Laura Maldonado love to travel. But as college students juggling classes and assignments, they don’t have a lot of time.
“And we don’t have a lot of money,” McLane said, laughing.
So the longtime friends and George Mason University mathematics majors use math modeling to plot day trips to cities across the country, seeing as many sights as possible for no more than $250 apiece, travel included.
Their travel tips are available on their blog: America in a Day (americainaday.blogspot.com).
“It’s using math in the real world,” Maldonado said.
McLane, who graduated in May, and Maldonado, a rising senior, have blogged about trips to Miami, Seattle and Washington, D.C., and a micro trip to Georgetown. They plan to take four or five trips a year.
Once they find the cheapest way to get to their destination, McLane and Maldonado check the Internet for cheap eats and free activities.
Using Google Maps, they plot the best route to see everything on their list in the least amount of time. It’s an optimization problem, McLane said: finding the maximum value of a function using several variables within a set of constraints.
“There are three different elements we used math modeling for,” she said. “We have a time constraint. We’re also dealing with a spot where we start and where we end. We have a budget we’re trying to keep, too.”
George Mason math education professor Jennifer Suh thought their idea was so cool, she had McLane and Maldonado present it at the recent Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C.
Suh, on a trip to Mason Korea, demonstrated America in a Day to 60 South Korean teachers and challenged them to come up with Korea in a Day.
“This is a real-world math problem we can bring into the classroom,” said Suh, who is co-director of the Center for Outreach in Mathematics Professional Learning and Educational Technology. “When [students] see math happens all around them, they can make decisions in their everyday lives based on math.”
The next decision for McLane, who will pursue a master’s degree in engineering at Mason, and Maldonado, who is getting married in July, is where to go next.
“Boston,” they said in unison, and perhaps Key West and Orlando as part of Maldonado’s honeymoon.
“It’s like a hobby we like to do,” Maldonado said.
“A hobby,” McLane said, “that works for us.”