Seeing Math Differently: How MTFC Sparked My Interest

For some students, a love of math starts early. For others, it grows unexpectedly. In this blog, Zoe Gorbachev, a past Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC) student and current ambassador, shares how her perspective on math shifted, from frustration with formulas to discovering the power of math modeling. Through her experience with MTFC, she found not only confidence, but a new direction for her future.

Math was never really my “thing.” I hated memorizing formulas, struggled to remember identities, and couldn’t subtract for the life of me. But I still love math. At some point, I realized that the subject wasn’t only about punching numbers into a calculator for no apparent reason. When wielded well, it can actually do something.

That realization is what drew me to math modeling in the first place. There’s a math modeling club at my school, and when I heard about a meeting, I showed up. My friends were there too, which made it easy to stick around, but what kept me coming back was the work itself. The introduction of Modeling the Future Challenge (MTFC) into the mix pushed me to go deeper than anything I was doing in class. It’s built around real-world problems, and the math that can solve them comes naturally.

It’s also been a great primer for more advanced study. The way MTFC is structured forced me to think analytically and work through messy problems, skills that go way beyond the competition itself. I came in curious and left with a toolkit for higher education and beyond.

For me, that “beyond” looks like theoretical astronomy, which involves using mathematical models to explain, interpret, and predict celestial phenomena. It’s about as real-world (or out-of-this-world!) as it gets, and I don’t think I’d have found my way to it without first learning how to see math the way MTFC taught me to.

Zoe’s journey is a powerful reminder that math doesn’t have to begin as your favorite subject to become your passion. Sometimes, it just takes seeing how math applies to real-world challenges to unlock its potential. Through MTFC, students like Zoe are discovering new possibilities, in her case, even charting a path toward the stars.