Remote Work- M3 MathWorks Math Modelling Challenge 2022

The joke is told of a frustrated farmer who relates his troubles to a friend of his, who happens to be a prominent physicst. The farmer bemoans the fact that none of his hens will lay eggs. "Ah," the physicist replied, "give me a few days, and I shall discover a solution for you." The physicist departs. Two days later, the physicst returns, and excitedly declares, "Eureka! I have your egg problem solved!" Incredulous, the farmer replies, "Really?!" To which the physicist replies, "Most definitely! There is one small detail, however; my solution assumes that all of the hens are spherical, with all of their mass concentrated at their centers." The relevance here? For the past 7 years, (this year being the exception), high school students from my school - with my encouragement- have formed a team to compete at SIAM's annual M3 Math Challenge. (SIAM is the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics). Even without having a team to coach this year, the nature of the competition - coupled with recent concerning world developments- are of extreme interest to me. The problems posed each year are not purely abstract math problems, but involve the application of mathematics to real world problems, usually of strong relevance to current events; thus, we adults would be well advised to examine the conclusions presented by the winning teams, and hopefully apply these conclusions for the purpose of improving our circumstances and future prospects as a civilization. For those unfamiliar with the competition, teams of 3-5 students each are challenged to complete a real-world, relevant, multi-part math problem. Viable solutions must include a lengthy report- akin to a major research paper in an advanced high school class, or perhaps a work project normally expected to take a few weeks to complete- all within the span of 14 hours. To clarify how this works, if the team members download the project at 9 AM on Saturday or Sunday, they must complete and submit all parts of their solution by 11 PM that same day. While they break for lunch, dinner, etc., the clock continues ticking. SIAM very recently released the solutions of the winning teams in this year's competition. The challenge this year was to investigate the percentage of jobs which are "remote-ready," meaning that they could be done online from home, within several specified cities in the United States and Great Britain, and ultimately design a model enabling the prediction of percentage of workers who would be working online from home, projecting up to 5 years in the future. Raw data is broken down by gender, age range, level of education, and occupation categories. However, this problem also requires students to take into account workers' preferences in terms of remote versus in-person work, as well as employers' preferences concerning their employees' working virtually as opposed to in-person, coupled with their flexibility in terms of considering their employees' preferences in this regard. This problem is of interest for a number of reasons. Young people who are entering or approaching adulthood- including college students and perhaps high school juniors and seniors- are likely planning their careers, and may well consider the potential of work flexibility and the possibility of working from home. Their decision on where to reside may hinge on this possibility. The need- or lack of need- to commute to and from work everyday are important considerations. There is the individual workers' consideration of arranging daily commute (if applicable). We - as a world human commmunity- should, however, consider the impact on society at large. As we see increasing impact of global climate change driven by continued use of fossil fuels, remote work can be seen as a way to buy us some time by reducing the emissions from our still-mostly gasoline-powered cars. Hopefully, we eventually switch to 100% clean energy vehicles (electric, etc.), with the electricity powered 100% from renewable resources, but even optimistic projections recognize we are at least a few decades from achieving this. In any event, I wanted to address the issue of assumptions. A major consideration in any mathematical model is the assumption(s) as initially stated, and validity of such assumptions- hence, the joke about the farmer's hens. It is only fair, however, that I precede these comments by praising all of the students who submitted viable solutions- and especially those winning teams whose solutions are presented. This is definitely a non-trivial problem. It would be a challenge to solve within a month- let alone within a 14-hour period. The winning teams' solutions and mathematical methodologies are quite ingenious, and I would certainly not be inclined to critique these. However, if the reader will forgive perhaps a mild trace of impudence, I cannot resist the urge to comment a wee bit upon some of the assumptions. In defense of the students making certain assumptions, it should be acknowledged that experience of age is likely the primary consideration. This does not diminish the remarkable potential of these gifted young scholars, and enormous value they offer to society as they apply their talents. That being said..... One of the problematic assumptions was the notion that choice of profession is independent of gender. My own profession would seem to immediately refute this point. According to the OECD, the percentage breakdown of elementary teachers in the U.S. is 86.8% female, 13.2% male. There is a steady decrease in this imbalance as we increase in students' age levels: In junior high, this breakdown decreases to 66.8% female, 33.2% male. By high school (my own student body), the breakdown is 58.2% femaile, 41.8% male. It is only when we examine tertiary (post-secondary) U.S. education that we finally see a virtual parity, at 50.2% female, 49.8% male. Okay- enough with the education example.... How about technicians, electricians, plumbers, auto repair? Without researching each of these professions individually, I presume we can all agree that when we call upon any of these professionals, we are far more likely to be serviced by a male than a female. Thus, hopefully we have sufficiently refuted the notion of gender being uncorrelated with profession. Another problematic assumption made by competitors included the notion that parents are fully able to supervise their kids while working remotely from home. Ah! Speaking as a father of 3, please let me assure you of the invalidity of this assumption. We can start from infancy (the relatively "easy" age) and advance from there. Infants are easy, right? All they do is eat, drink, sleep, and release waste. That being so, all you need to do is structure your day based upon the regular pattern of meals, waste, naps, etc. Seriously- how much consistency do you expect, and how much anticipation of unanticipated interruptions can you truly work around? If you have a live meeting at 1 PM, and your baby wakes up and needs you at 1:15? How would your boss likely respond to the defense "Oh- my apologies, the baby was supposed to nap until 2:30. I suppose I miscalculated." Even supposing all of your work is extremely flexibile, with all interactions asynchronous- have you noticed how inefficienctly work tends to progress when there are frequent interruptions? You are in the midst of one task, the baby suddenly needs your attention, and you expect- after meeting the kid's needs- that you will be able to smoothly get back on task? (More realistically, "Uh... where exactly was I when the baby started flipping out? Oh, that page- uh oh, what line was I up to" is the more likely scenario. Oh, that's just the beginning. The baby eventually gets older. At the toddler stage (1-3 years), you need to be frequently monitoring that he or she is not causing trouble of some sort- risking his or her own safety when playing, damaging items in the home, including flushing bath toys down the toilet (at a cost of at least $250 to replace as of about 7 years ago. God knows what the cost would be in 2022), etc. Oh, and then when there are siblings? In addition to the aforementioned items, you then will have the fun of mediating disputes of all sorts. You can anticipate having your work duties interrupted by all-pressing issues, including- but by no means limited to- "He went into my room!", "She played with my _______ (fill in name of toy)," "I can't find my _________ (fill in name of lost item)", resolving property disputes such as the following: Kid A outgrew toy x, and Kid B took possession in advance of toy x being thrown into the trash. Months having passed, Kid B takes out toy x, and now Kid A is demanding the right to repossess toy x. By the time you are finished admonishing Kid A (hopefully), you have no clue what you were just working on. I have not even mentioned the issue of transporting kids to and from school and/or other activities. So much for the notion of simultaneously working and caring for young children- or shall I say, successfully working and properly caring for young children. Much like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, one - but not both - of these can be managed at any particular time. There is a 3rd commonly asserted assumption in the winning entries- namely, the assumption that workers are sufficiently flexible about their place of residence that they would freely - without any hesitation or vacillation - relocate anywhere solely based on job opportunities as applied to their professional goals. In other words, to take it to an extreme, this implies that any American would happily relocate to Antarctica provided he or she received a sufficiently lucrative job opportunity that was compatible with his or her professional goals. At a certain level, perhaps, I am being facetious here. However, when we consider that very example in the context of this (erroneous) assumption, it is evident that refuting it is accomplished quite easily- and we should surely discard the example. I should be fair on this point, and grant that these students are quite possibly making this assumption based on their own short-term projections. They may well perceive that in their own near-term future - which may not necessarily involve a spouse and/or kids- their plan is to complete their schooling, whether at the Bachelor's or (more likely) graduate level, they will happily move to whatever location may be required for them to secure their most preferred job opportunity. Speaking as a middle-aged man- with wife and kids - I would point out that over the long-term, this assumption becomes increasingly invalid. Suppose, as an example, I were to somehow receive an extremely lucrative job opportunity, with extremely favorable working conditions- on the other end of the country. Imagine I were to then declare to my wife, "Honey, I just received an outstanding job offer in Tumakeeki, an isolated, tiny town in South Carolina. We're moving there in 3 weeks. We'll have to pull the kids out of their current school, move everything...." I have never tested this- even as a (bad) joke; however, I assure you the response would NOT be "Mazel Tov! Let's get ready." Honestly, I am not sure I want to know the exact response, but suspect someting more along the lines of "Are you _______ kidding me?" - perhaps with some colorful adverbs thrown in for emphasis. In any event, can we dispense with this 3rd assumption? I believe I have made my point sufficiently. This was- by the way - intended in part in the spirit of some light-hearted humor, something needed all the more urgently given current world circumstances. Again, this is not to diminish the accomplishments of the participants in this year's M3 Mega Math Challenge. I would like to encourage all of our gifted young people- whether in math, science, or any other field - to please continue applying your full potential, both in your classes and in tackling problems which, like this one, impact our country and society.