The descriptions on of each event should be shared with all students prior to the day of the contest. Teams may consist of students of different grade levels.
No student will be allowed to enter a testing session after a test has begun. Students are expected to remain in their assigned rooms and to refrain from talking throughout the individual testing sessions. Any student making disruptive noises may be asked to leave the room. During the team event, students should talk quietly with their teammates so that they do not inadvertently share answers with other teams.
Students should bring at least 2 sharpened pencils and a calculator. Any calculator allowed on the SAT may be used (http://sat.collegeboard.org/register/calculator-policy).
Calculators are allowed ONLY on the Target and Team Events. A student must furnish his or her own calculator. Calculators are NOT allowed on the Relay and Sprint Events.
Students may not use any dictionaries or other reference materials. If any student’s proficiency in the language(s) the tests are offered in is so severely limited as to preclude participation in mathleague.org contests, that student’s coach may make arrangements with mathleague.org to provide a written translation of the tests, so long as the translation can be accomplished in a timely and secure fashion, and at no cost to mathleague.org. Any such translation must be approved by mathleague.org before use at a contest.
Fractional numbers must be expressed in simplest (lowest) terms or as an equivalent decimal fraction, unless a ratio is requested. For example, 0.33 is not equivalent to 1/3 and would be counted incorrect if the answer were 1/3. All improper fractions may be expressed as mixed numbers or improper fractions.
In addition to releasing the test materials on the day of the contest, results of ALL sites will be available online at mathleague.org to the public after the results have been finalized by the site coordinator. Students’ names will not be listed; the school’s name will be listed and the student’s first and last initials. Students will now be able to see how they rank with regard to everyone else at a particular site and across the state. Please encourage all students to understand the penalty for guessing on all events. On Sprint, students should once again work accurately and generally not guess unless they can narrow it down to 2 choices. It is possible and probable that students will receive negative scores on the Sprint round due to not understanding the penalty for incorrect answers. For example, a student who gets 2 questions correct on Sprint and then guesses on the remaining 28 (getting all 28 wrong) would have a score of 4×2 – 28×1 = -20. On Target and Team, students should never leave a question blank—they should always guess since there is no penalty for guessing.
For the Regional and State Math Competitions, there are two different ways that ties are broken for awards. If two students tied with the same score in an event (e.g. Target with a score of 30), their Borda scores were compared to see which student answered the more difficult questions. The student with the lower Borda score would place higher than the other. To break absolute ties in Sprint or Target, we looked at the students’ opposing event scores. Say that Students A, B and C are all tied with a score of 30 on Target, all with the same Borda scores indicating they answered the same 3 questions correct. We then look at their Sprint scores. Say Student A has a Sprint score of 60, Student B has a sprint score of 55, and Student C has a sprint score of 50. Then to break the tie on Target, Student A would be first, Student B would be second, and Student C would be third.
