Women make up only 35% of STEM graduates. Female scholars earned 25% of the Doctoral Degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences. Statistics can paint a clear picture, but the gender gap in STEM only becomes more prevalent the closer you look.
Behind every percentage lies girls who have been excluded from discussions, isolated in class, and assumed to be less because they weren’t given the chance to speak up in the first place. Gender stereotypes can take root as early as age six, bringing about self-doubt and a loss of interest in STEM that adolescents carry into adulthood and their professional careers. This pattern is perpetuated by the erasure of women in academia. The lack of representation makes eliminating the gender disparity in mathematics impossible.
Therefore, we created QuantiMath to help bridge this gap.
QuantiMath is an online applied math workshop dedicated to empowering middle school girls by sparking curiosity and cultivating confidence. Our mission is to build strong critical thinking skills, establish the connection between abstract concepts and real-world impact, and ignite a lifelong passion for discovery. Above all, we are committed to providing an inclusive, welcoming space where every girl feels encouraged to ask big questions, explore complex ideas, and develop the problem-solving skills to navigate the world of STEM.
It can often feel overwhelming to begin exploring the vast universe of mathematics, so QuantiMath is designed to be the launchpad. All workshops are free of charge and require no previous knowledge. By taking our course, you will acquire a strong foundation of skills that will aid you as you continue your mathematical journey.
Four online workshop series per year, each diving into an applied math topic like game theory, sports modeling, or astronomy. Five sessions per series, one hour each.
Math Modeling Competition
An annual asynchronous competition where students collaborate with peers to apply what they've learned in a creative, open-ended math modeling challenge.
Monthly Newsletter
Discover fascinating topics every month through our newsletter, featuring short articles and challenges to keep your curiosity alive between sessions.
QuantiMath is an online applied math workshop for middle school girls, featuring seasonal lesson series, an annual math modeling competition, and a monthly newsletter. Our goal is to encourage interest in STEM by showing how math shapes the world around us, introducing students to foundational topics in applied mathematics, and creating a community where girls can think, explore, and collaborate freely.
This year, we offer four online lesson series, two in the fall and two in the winter. In the spring, students can showcase their skills in our annual math modeling competition, an asynchronous and collaborative challenge open to all experience levels. Additionally, our monthly newsletter highlights real-world applications of math, shares resources, and helps students stay connected to the QuantiMath community.
Our Mission
Women make up only 35% of STEM graduates. Female scholars earned 25% of the Doctoral Degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences. Statistics can paint a clear picture, but the gender gap in STEM only becomes more prevalent the closer you look.
Behind every percentage lies girls who have been excluded from discussions, isolated in class, and assumed to be less because they weren’t given the chance to speak up in the first place. Gender stereotypes can take root as early as age six, bringing about self-doubt and a loss of interest in STEM that adolescents carry into adulthood and their professional careers. This pattern is perpetuated by the erasure of women in academia. The lack of representation makes eliminating the gender disparity in mathematics impossible.
Therefore, we created QuantiMath to help bridge this gap.
QuantiMath is an online applied math workshop dedicated to empowering middle school girls by sparking curiosity and cultivating confidence. Our mission is to build strong critical thinking skills, establish the connection between abstract concepts and real-world impact, and ignite a lifelong passion for discovery. Above all, we are committed to providing an inclusive, welcoming space where every girl feels encouraged to ask big questions, explore complex ideas, and develop the problem-solving skills to navigate the world of STEM.
It can often feel overwhelming to begin exploring the vast universe of mathematics, so QuantiMath is designed to be the launchpad. All workshops are free of charge and require no previous knowledge. By taking our course, you will acquire a strong foundation of skills that will aid you as you continue your mathematical journey.
Meet the Team
Helen Xiong
Co-Founder · Program Lead · Instructor
Helen Xiong is a sophomore at Phillips Academy Andover. She has participated in math competitions including AIME and MATHCOUNTS States, and she enjoys exploring topics across mathematics and physics. Beyond the classroom, Helen writes for the school newspaper, enjoys digital art, and plays Ultimate Frisbee.
Jiayu (Ellie) Su
Co-Founder · Competition Lead · Instructor
Jiayu (Ellie) Su is a junior at Phillips Academy Andover and has been competing in mathematics since fourth grade. Her achievements include qualifying for the USAMO/USAJMO, the Math Prize for Girls Olympiad, and the HMMT Invitational. She has also competed in HiMCM, a well known math modeling competition, three times. Beyond mathematics, she is passionate about physics, computer science, music composition, and poetry.
Ashley Zhu
Co-Founder · Instructor
Ashley Zhu is a sophomore at Phillips Academy Andover. She has been participating in math competitions since elementary school, including the AIME and placing at MATHCOUNTS states. Ashley also enjoys soccer and tennis, playing piano, solving Flow puzzles, and psychology.
Lucy Zhang
Co-Founder · Instructor
Lucy Zhang is a junior at Oxford Academy who has participated in math competitions like the AMCs since the fourth grade. With a deep passion for mathematics, she has become a multiple-time qualifier for the USAMO/USAJMO and is dedicated to bridging gaps in STEM while fostering a love for the subject among young women. Outside of math, Lucy enjoys swimming, reading, and playing the flute.
Course Catalogue
Workshop Format
Each seasonal workshop series focuses on one applied math topic and runs for five one-hour sessions, one per week. Sessions are held online, and sign-ups are managed through the website.
All workshops are free of charge, require no previous knowledge of the subject, and are open to all middle school girls.
Modeling the Stars: Understanding the Universe through Systems, Orbits, and Spaceships
Instructor: Ellie Su
Coming soon.
Winter 2026 B
Financial Literacy: Markets and Macroeconomics
Instructor: Lucy Zhang
Coming soon.
Newsletter
What's Inside
Join the QuantiMath email list to receive our monthly newsletter! Every issue includes program updates, articles about projects or topics in STEM, and fun challenges to exercise your curiosity and creativity.
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Math Modeling Competition
About the Competition
Every spring, QuantiMath hosts a math modeling competition open to all participants, regardless of experience level. The competition is asynchronous, students work at their own pace and are encouraged to collaborate with peers to create their final submission.
Math modeling is about applying mathematical thinking to real-world problems: defining assumptions, building a model, analyzing results, and communicating your reasoning. We value creative and well-reasoned approaches.
The competition is a chance to showcase the logical thinking and applied math skills developed throughout the year.
Coming Soon!
Who Can Participate?
Open to all girls in 8th grade and under, all experience levels welcome. You do not need to have attended a QuantiMath workshop to compete.
Asynchronous & Collaborative
Work on your own schedule. Teams and solo submissions are both welcome.
Past Competition Archive
Past problem sets will be posted here after each competition concludes.
No past competitions yet, check back after Spring 2027.
Course Resources
Game Theory: The Logic of Decisions & Strategies
Games
Chomp
Eat squares from a chocolate bar, but avoid being forced to take the poisoned bottom-left piece.
Click any square to eat it, along with everything above it and to its right. The player forced to eat the bottom-left square (the poisoned piece) loses.
Click a stone to take it and all stones to its right. You can take between 1 and the move limit stones per turn. The player who takes the last stone wins.
Each dot represents one person in a population. At every step, infected individuals may spread the disease to their neighbors, and may also recover. Watch how a single infection can sweep through a community — or fizzle out.
SusceptibleInfectedRecovered
Speed:
Step 0
Parameters
Transmission (β)30% per neighbor
Recovery (γ)10% per step
Start Infected
3
Population
500
Steps of 100 (100–900)
Sign Up
Join the QuantiMath community and start exploring the world of applied math.
QuantiMath is free
All workshops, the newsletter, and the competition are free of charge.
Fully Online
All sessions take place online, so you can participate from anywhere.
No Prerequisites
Courses are designed for middle school girls at all experience levels.
Lesson 3: Introduction to Combinatorial Game Theory
Game tree, Zermelo's theorem, Chomp
Lesson 4: Further Exploration of Combinatorial Game Theory
Nim
Lesson 5: Real-world Applications of Game Theory
What does game theory teach us about our world?
Fall 2026 A
Course Details
Sep 18 – Oct 16 Fridays 8–9pm EST 5 Sessions
Instructor
Helen Xiong
Helen Xiong is a sophomore at Phillips Academy Andover. She has participated in math competitions including AIME and MATHCOUNTS States, and she enjoys exploring topics across mathematics and physics. Beyond the classroom, Helen writes for the school newspaper, enjoys digital art, and plays Ultimate Frisbee.
Cryptography is the art and science of secret communication — and it has shaped empires, won wars, and now secures everything from your email to your bank account. In this course, we travel from ancient ciphers to modern encryption, learning how to both create and break codes along the way.
You'll master classical techniques like the Caesar cipher and Vigenère cipher, then learn how to crack them using frequency analysis. From there, we step into the world of modern cryptography — public and private keys, one-way functions, and how RSA keeps the internet safe.
Perfect for anyone who loves puzzles, patterns, and the idea that math can keep secrets.
Caesar cipherSubstitution cipherVigenère cipherPigpen cipherFrequency analysisCodebreakingPublic/private keysOne-way functionsRSA encryptionDigital signaturesHashesCybersecurity
How do scientists predict the weather? How does Netflix know what you'll watch next? The answer, almost always, is math. In this course, we explore the tools data scientists use to find patterns in messy, real-world data and turn them into confident predictions.
From reading a scatter plot to building a regression model, you'll develop the statistical intuition to ask better questions of any dataset. We'll also tackle one of the most important skills in the modern world: knowing when a correlation is meaningful and when it's just a coincidence.
Come ready to question what the numbers are really telling you.
Data visualizationProbabilityUncertaintyAverages & variationCorrelation vs. causationTrend linesRegressionSimulationsPrediction modelsReal-world forecasting
Ashley Zhu is a sophomore at Phillips Academy Andover. She has been participating in math competitions since elementary school, including the AIME and placing at MATHCOUNTS states. Ashley also enjoys soccer and tennis, playing piano, solving Flow puzzles, and psychology.
Every app, feed, and search result you see was shaped by an algorithm. But what exactly is an algorithm, and how does it decide what you see? In this course, we demystify the math powering the digital world, from the simple logic of sorting to the surprisingly complex systems behind AI.
You'll learn how Google ranks pages, how Spotify builds playlists, and how matching algorithms pair students with schools. More importantly, you'll develop the tools to think critically about these systems — understanding not just how they work, but who they help and who they leave out.
Essential for anyone who interacts with technology — which is everyone.
Democracy sounds simple: everyone votes, the majority wins. But the math of elections is far stranger and more fascinating than it seems. In this course, we discover that there are many ways to run an election — and they can produce very different winners from the exact same set of votes.
We'll dig into ranked-choice voting, the Borda count, and the Condorcet paradox, exploring why a candidate can win every head-to-head matchup and still lose the election. We'll also look at gerrymandering — how the shape of a district can determine an outcome before anyone casts a ballot.
For anyone who cares about fairness and wants to understand the systems that shape society.
Our fourth workshop series is currently in development. We're working on something exciting — check back soon for details on the topic, syllabus, and registration.
If you'd like to be notified when this course is announced, sign up for our newsletter.
Details Coming Soon
Topic, lessons, and materials will be posted here once the course is finalized.
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