Meet Guidelines

Guidelines for Host Schools

General Guidelines

Invitations with contest rules and directions to your school should be sent out at least three weeks in advance. Include directions on where to park and how to get to the registration table. Make sure to include an email address and phone number where you can be reached the day of the meet for emergencies or last minute changes.

Directions to contest rooms, scoring room, and auditorium should be clearly posted.

Include times in the invitation:

• Registration 5:45 - 6:10
• Round One 6:15 - 6:30
• Round Two 6:35 - 6:50
• Round Three 6:55 - 7:10
• Round Four 7:15 - 7:30
• Team Event 7:35 - 7:50
• Scoring 7:50 - 8:10
• Awards 8:15

Registration Table

The registration table should have extra score sheets, change for extra teams, and room assignments for teams, monitors, and scorers.

The math contests should be bundled by room and handed to the room monitor at registration along with an instruction sheet on how to run the room.

Have some blank receipts ready for the schools that need them. You can print your own from this template.

Directions to the rooms and auditorium should be available.

Contest Papers

Duplicate contests on five different colored pastel papers - one color per round.

Word the questions with specific instructions to allow only one answer

EXAMPLE

Bad Question: Find 2 hours divided by 6

Possible Answer: 1/3 hours or .333 hours or 20 minutes or 1200 seconds or 1/72 days or .013888 days ...

Better Question: Find 2 hours divided by 6. Answer as exact number of minutes

Only Answer: 20 minutes

Calculator events are event four and the team event and should be clearly marked. The problems on the calculator event should be solvable with a calculator and not require exact answers.

Calculator events should be written so that one brand of calculator does not have an advantage over another. For example, a TI-89 can do exact symbolic manipulation while a TI-86 cannot.

Clearly instruct when answers are to be exact or approximate. If approximate, the instructions at the top of each the event should say "round answers to hundredth place unless otherwise directed"

Have an impartial teacher check the contest for:

• appropriate problems
• difficulty level of problems
• specific wording in problems
• correct solutions to problems

Auditorium or Cafeteria

An auditorium or cafeteria should have adequate seating for all participants and be available before and after the meet.

Print one copy of answers per team to be handed out in the auditorium after the contest.

Have a microphone available in the auditorium to announce awards.

Only the advisor is allowed to approach the host school advisor about corrections from a student's paper. Absolutely no students will be allowed to approach the microphone.

Scoring Room

Have red pens for scoring and ball-point pens for recording.

Have clearly marked answer sheets for scorers. Math teachers in the scoring room should begin the meet by working the problems to verify the answers and to look for alternate forms of the answer.

Have a folder labeled for each school with a clean copy of the test and an answer sheet in each folder.

Have tables ready for scoring and counters (or tables) nearby for folders and score sheets.

Try to have adequate personnel in the scoring room for scoring, recording and running. It is recommended to have five people per table-four to score problems and one person to sum and check for errors.

Have light refreshments for scorers and room monitors

Contest Rooms

Scratch paper should be available

Desks should be arranged in columns of eight.

Room monitors should be reminded to be on the lookout for cheating. Any disciplinary problems with the students should be brought to the attention of the advisor for that school sometime within that week so the student can be held responsible for their actions.

Revised 4/22/2008