HiMCM Contest Registration and Instructions Registration Fee *Please register only the teams that will take part in the contest. Registration fees are not refundable.* The first step in the registration process is payment of the $50 registration fee per team. We accept payment via Mastercard or Visa, and payment must be made via our secure web site. We regret that we are not able to accept other forms of payment. To participate in HiMCM a team must be sponsored by a faculty advisor from that school. The registration process must be completed by the advisor. There are several procedures that a team's advisor must go through at various times before, during, and after the contest. Please read these instructions carefully and be sure to complete all the steps involved. It is the advisor's responsibility to make sure that teams are correctly registered and that all steps required for participation in HiMCM are completed. Note that COMAP is in the USA Eastern time zone: all times given in these instructions are in terms of Eastern Standard Time (EST) except where local time is noted. Contest Rules A team may consist of up to four enrolled students. You must obtain and use your control number and password to participate in the 9th annual HiMCM. Teams must log on to the specified web site at the beginning of their thirty-six hour contest period (not before 3:01 p.m. on Friday, November 2, 2007) to receive the contest problems. Teams must then choose to work on either the A or B problem. The contest runs between 3:01 p.m. EST Friday, November 2nd and 8:00 p.m. EST on Monday, November 19, 2007. Each team will decide on a consecutive 36-hour period between November2-19 to work on the contest. For example, the contest for your team could be from 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, November 6 until 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 7. Your teams' contest ends upon completion of the 36-hour period. Faculty advisors must ensure that no alterations of any form are made after the end of your 36-hour period or after 8:00 p.m. EST Monday November 19, 2007. Papers must be collected from students at this time and returned to COMAP for judging. All papers must be received no later than 5:00 p.m. EST Tuesday, November 27, 2007. A signed Parental/Guardian Authorization form must be included for each participating student. Schools should send the original forms to COMAP, and retain a copy of each for their records. All accommodations relative to learning conditions for individual students would follow the accommodations used as part of the local school program in an affected student's daily learning. If specialized staff is required, the school bears the responsibility for providing any specialized assistance as required by law. If such accommodations are required for a student participating, the school should detail them and the extent to which they were utilized as part of the HiMCM activities. Before the contest registration deadline of 2:00 p.m. (EST) on Friday, November 2, 2007: Register Your Team(s) Online: The registration process will take you through a series of screens that ask you for your email address and contact information. Enter the required information as you step through the screens. Important: Be sure to use a valid current email address so that we can use it to contact you at any point before, during, or after the contest, if necessary. All teams must be registered before 2:00 p.m. (EST) Friday, November 2, 2007. At that time the registration system will stop accepting new team registrations. To guard against the possibility of interruptions in Internet service we recommend that all teams compete the registration process well in advance of the deadline. COMAP will not accept any late registrations under any circumstances. No exceptions will be made. Registration is via the contest web site. No other forms of registration will be accepted. To register a team, click the Registration link on the left side of this page. If you have already registered a team for this year's contest and want to register additional teams, email us at himcm@comap.com or call 800-772-6627 ext. 135. After each team is registered, you will receive an email confirmation. You must follow the link in the email to complete the registration process for each team. Advisors may register any number of teams, but must use the same email address and password for all teams. You may specify the team members at the time of registration, or as you enter your Control Sheet information at the end of the contest. Team members may be changed up until the beginning of the contest period. Once the contest problems are read, team members cannot be changed. The spelling of all names and institutions is the responsibility of the advisor. This is exactly as they will appear on certificates. COMAP will not reprint certificates. Once you have completed the registration, you will receive a Team Control Number. The screen giving your team control number is the only confirmation that you will receive indicating that you have successfully registered that team. In order to participate in the contest, you will need to return to the contest website to confirm information about your team, and to print out the Control Sheet and Summary Sheet that you will need to prepare and mail your team's Solution Packet. If at any point before or during the contest you need to change any of the information that you specified when you registered, you may do so by logging in to the contest website with the email address and password that you specified when registering. Once logged in click the Register/Update button and proceed. Return to the contest website regularly to check for any updated instructions or announcements regarding the contest. Except in extreme circumstances, COMAP will not send any confirmation, reminders, or announcements by email. All communication regarding the contest will be via the contest website. Preparing a Team Go to the HiMCM web site and review the rules, guidelines and prior years' problems to prepare your students. Ensure that students have access to computers that enable them to word process, use a spreadsheet, and dynamically model both graphs and geometric relationships. In addition, students should have access to graphing calculators. It is both legitimate and desirable to coach or otherwise prepare your team(s). Visit the COMAP web site at www.comap.com and search for 'modeling' products to prepare your students. Remember, the Summer issue of the Consortium newsletter contains the winning Solution Papers (or the solution abstracts) from the previous years' contest. All parents of students participating in the contest must sign a Parental/Guardian Authorization Form making their child's work available (with confidentiality assurance) for use in example and training materials for HiMCM professional development activities. Additionally, should their team be designated as an Outstanding winner, the student's Solution Paper (or solution abstract) will be published in COMAP's Consortium newsletter, among other places. THIS AUTHORIZATION FORM MUST BE DOWNLOADED FROM THE INTERNET AND SENT HOME WITH EACH STUDENT BEFORE THE CONTEST PERIOD. SIGNED AUTHORIZATION FORMS FOR EACH STUDENT MUST BE INCLUDED WITH SOLUTION PAPERS FOR CONSIDERATION BY THE JUDGES. Preparing a Solution Paper The contest problems will become available at 3:01 pm EST on Friday, November 2, 2007. When teams are ready to compete they can view the problems by visiting the 2007 problem website. No password will be needed to view the problems; simply click on the link above and choose between problem A or B. If for some reason you are unable to access the COMAP website at the time the problems are posted, there will be a mirror site available at http://www.comap-math.com/himcm. The COMAP site and the mirror site are located on servers in different parts of the USA. If you cannot access one or the other, you should contact your ISP to resolve the issue. The contest consists of a choice of two problems A or B. Teams may use any inanimate source of data, materials, computers, software, references, websites, books, etc. Be sure to credit all sources used. Teams may not use any person (other than team members) to discuss or obtain ideas for solving their problem nor may they seek help in obtaining an answer from the teams' advisor or anyone else. Any team that discusses the problem with anyone in a position to supply them with information reflecting experience or professional expertise will be disqualified. The relevant issue is one of intent: each team of students is expected to develop all of its substantive analysis without the help of others. Partial solutions are acceptable. There is no passing or failing cutoff score, nor will numerical scores be assigned. The HiMCM judges are primarily interested in a teams' approach and methods. Papers must be typed and in English. The solution must consist entirely of written text and possibly figures, charts, or other written material, on paper only. No non paper support such as computer disks will be accepted. Each page of the solution must contain the team control number and the page number at the top of the page; we suggest using a page header on each page for example: Team # 321 page 6 of 13. The names of the students, advisor, or institution must not appear on any page of the solution. The solution must not contain any identifying information other than the team Control Number. Any preparation rule not followed is grounds for disqualification. Teams should keep in mind the following guidelines while preparing their solution papers: Conciseness and organization are extremely important. Key statements should present major ideas and results. Present a clarification or restatement of the problem as appropriate. Present a clear exposition of all variables, assumptions, and hypotheses. Present an analysis of the problem, motivating or justifying the modeling to be used. Include a design of the model. Discuss how the model could be tested. Discuss any apparent strengths or weaknesses to your model or approach. Incorporate lengthy derivations, computations, or illustrative examples in appendices. Summarize these in the main report. Results must be explicitly stated in the body of the report. During the contest the advisor should: Login to the contest website and enter your email address and password. Enter the team members names and confirm that they are spelled correctly. Specify the problem that each team has chosen to solve. Print one copy of the Control Sheet and one copy of the Summary Sheet. Preparing and Submitting a Solution Paper Teams must end all work on the Solution Paper at the end of the team's consecutive 36-hour period, or by 8:00 p.m. EST on Monday November 19, 2007. Have each student sign the Control Sheet, pledging that they have abided by the contest rules and instructions. Type a summary of the teams solution on the Summary Sheet and make one copy. The Summary Sheet The summary is a very important part of your HiMCM paper. The judges place considerable weight on the summary, and winning papers are sometimes distinguished from other papers based on the quality of the summary. To write a good summary, imagine that a reader may choose whether to read the body of the paper based on your summary. Thus, a summary should clearly describe your approach to the problem and, most prominently, what your most important conclusions were. The summary should inspire a reader to learn the details of your work. Your concise presentation of the summary should inspire a reader to learn the details of your work. Summaries that are mere restatements of the contest problem, or are a cut-and-paste boilerplate from the Introduction are generally considered to be weak. To Summarize: Restatement Clarification of the Problem - state in your own words what you are going to do. Assumptions with Rationale/Justification - emphasize those assumptions that bear on the problem. List clearly all variables used in your model. Model Design and justification for type model used/developed. Model Testing and Sensitivity Analysis, including error analysis, etc. Discuss strengths and weakness to your model or approach. Provide algorithms in words, figures, or flow charts (as a step by step algorithmic approach) for all computer codes developed.Make two copies of the teams Solution Paper and staple one copy of the Summary Sheet on top of each Solution Paper. Staple the Control Sheet to just one copy of the Solution Paper. Be sure there is a signed Parental/Guardian Authorization form for each student and include it in the packet to be mailed. After the solution packet is prepared, mail it to: COMAP, Inc. Attn.: HiMCM, 175 Middlesex Turnpike Suite 3B Bedford, MA 01730 USA Solution Papers must be received by COMAP no later than 5:00 pm EST on Tuesday, November 27, 2007. COMAP is not responsible for any papers received after that date. It is suggested that papers be sent via a carrier that can provide tracking. If an acknowledgment of receipt is desired, mail the package "Return Receipt Requested" through the post office. HiMCM Results and Recognition Judging will be completed in January, 2008. The solutions will be recognized as Successful Participant, Honorable Mention, Meritorious, or Outstanding. Advisors and teams will be notified of the results in February, 2008 and they will be posted on the high school contest website. News releases will be prepared for local and national dissemination and there will be announcements in professional publications. Every team that submits a properly outlined Solution Paper will be awarded a certificate of participation. Outstanding teams will have their Solution Papers (or their solution abstracts) published in COMAP's Consortium newsletter among other places. Recognition information will also be sent to local newspapers and radio/television outlets.