MathViz wins Rep. George Whitesides’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 27th District

When asked what inspired the creation of MathViz, the students said, “Mathematics and STEM proficiency as a whole have been dipping in percentage in the United States, where math scores have dropped over 15 points over the past couple of years, and now only around 26% of 8th graders nationwide are proficient in math. The rise in lower mathematics and general STEM proficiency both leads to a significant reduction in the United States’ global economic output and greatly hinders future job readiness. The rapid technical advancement of AI requires strong problem-solving capabilities, which are given through math at an early age. Without it, the future generations of Americans will remain in shambles as the progression of other countries continues. 

“One of the biggest perpetrators of this crisis are outdated teaching methods that do not allow students to capture the concept thoroughly and effectively. Even in my area, math as a whole is completely under the radar, as kids are continuing to do worse on district benchmarks, and in my area specifically, schools are beginning to lose funding as a result of this. I personally found it frustrating to learn math when I was younger—especially competition math—as the concepts were convoluted and honestly did not make sense to me. The issue is something completely personal to me, and is why I wanted to create this tool and app, as something like this does not really exist for math at all, which is surprising considering how important it actually is. I wanted to make something that encompasses all of these and more, so I came up with MathViz to help combat this issue.”