Competition Rules
General Rules
- Contestants must be 19 years old or younger and must not be enrolled fulltime at a university.
- Each team can have no more than six people. Teams with fewer than six people will be at a disadvantage.
- No aids other than writing instruments and paper will be allowed. Compass and ruler are allowed, but not required. In particular, no calculators will be allowed on any part of the competition, and any cell phones must be given to a coach or a proctor before the contest rounds begin.
- CHMMC will use the ARML mathematical conventions. Please make sure students are familiar with these conventions so that their answers are not marked wrong because they did not write their answers in simplest form.
Virtual Competition Rules
When applicable, these supersede the general rules above.- Computers are not allowed on any part of a competition round except to:
- Access the problems for the current competition round (access will be provided at the start of the round)
- Submit answers at the end of the round via Google Forms or Gradescope
- During the team and proof rounds only, to communicate with the members of your team when working remotely, using the software of your choice (e.g. Zoom). You may not use this software to communicate with anyone outside of your team, and you may not use it to communicate with anyone during the individual round.
- During the team and proof rounds, to typeset your submission using LaTeX or similar software, and to refer to a LaTeX syntax reference
- Competitors are strongly encouraged to save any scratch work until after the end of the competition. Contest organizers reserve the right to ask to view any scratch work.
Specific Rules
The rules below for the specific rounds are subject to change in the 2022-2023 competition.
The group round will last for 120 minutes. The test will have two parts: a short answer part (called the team round) and a proof round. The parts will be weighted 40% Team, 60% Proof. Teams will be able to work on the two parts simultaneously.
- The team round will have ten questions with integer answers. In the team round, teams will not need to justify their answers. To get full credit, they will need only to submit the correct answer.
- The proof round will have several proof-based questions, with point values labelled over each question. The teams must justify their answers correctly to earn full credit, although incomplete solutions may earn partial credit. Problems will range in difficulty from simpler exercises to USAMO/IMO leveled Olympiad problems. (Note: there is no "Power Round" this year)
The individual round will last for 75 minutes. The test will have fifteen questions each with integer answers. Like in the short answer part of the team round, students will not need to justify their answers to the individual round questions.
The tiebreaker round will be similar to the ARML tiebreaker round. The top students with the same score on the individual round will be given a question to be solved in five minutes. The students will be able to submit an answer only once, and they will be ranked according to the time when they submit a correct answer.
Scoring
An individual's score will be their score on the individual round. If ties must be broken to determine the ranks of the top students, the tiebreaker round will be used.
A team's score will be the sum of its group round score and the individual round scores of its members. The rounds are weighted so that the sum of the individual round scores is worth as much as the group round score. If two teams are tied, the following criteria will be used, in order, until a winner can be determined:
- Highest group round score.
- Highest power question score.
- The highest-numbered question on the team round answered correctly by one tied team but incorrectly by another.