The National Mathematical Modeling Competition for College Students was founded in 1992 and held once a year. It has become the largest basic subject competition in domestic universities and the largest mathematical modeling competition in the world.

In 20 18, 1449 colleges/campuses and 42 128 teams (38,573 undergraduate teams and 3,555 junior college teams) from 34 provinces/cities/regions (including Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan Province) and the United States and Singapore signed up for the competition.

Modeling background

Over the past half century, with the rapid development of computer technology, the application of mathematics has not only played an increasingly important role in engineering technology, natural science and other fields, but also penetrated into new fields such as economy, management, finance, biology, medicine, environment, geology, population and transportation with unprecedented breadth and depth. The so-called mathematical technology has become an important part of modern high technology.

Mathematical model is a kind of simulation, which is an abstract and concise description of the essential attributes of practical topics with mathematical symbols, mathematical formulas, programs and graphics. It can not only explain some objective phenomena, but also predict the future development law, and also provide an optimal strategy or a better strategy in a sense for controlling the development of a phenomenon.

Generally speaking, mathematical model is not a direct copy of real problems, and its establishment often requires people to observe and analyze real problems in depth and carefully, and also requires people to use all kinds of mathematical knowledge flexibly and skillfully. This process of abstracting mathematical models from practical problems with applied knowledge is called mathematical modeling.