MathBot wins Rep. Nanette Barragan’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 44th District
Rep. Barragan has named Alan Cortez, a 12th grader at STEAM Legacy High School, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 44th District.
When asked what inspired the creation of MathBot, the student said, “AI has already been quietly evolving for some time, but only recently has it had such a profound evolution and explosion in popularity with the release of ChatGPT. ChatGPT harnesses the entirety of the internet’s collective knowledge and makes it available instantly. It does have one fatal flaw, though: it doesn’t love math. As I saw my classmates struggle, and my teacher overwhelmed with the lackluster resources at my school, I knew something could be done to leverage the power of AI for my community. With the mentorship of a Stanford graduate, I embarked on creating an AI math tutor called MathBot, which explains math problems step by step. Explaining math problems step by step is a significant development – most other math websites can only do basic functions but never solve a word problem fully on its own.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.