Varsity Math Team Frequently Asked Questions (VMT FAQ)
You are not expected to read the FAQ for fun or learn everything by heart. You are, however, expected to look here for the answers to any questions you may have about Varsity Math Team. If you think your question is not answered here or if you think something is inaccurate, please contact us at vmtofficers@gmail.com.
Last revised November 18th, 2009
Varsity Math Team, known as just Math Team or VMT, is an eighth period activity that also operates after school. VMT is responsible for selecting teams for math competitions at Duke, Princeton, Harvard/MIT, and Penn State, as well as creating and running TJ’s annual Intermediate Math Open (IMO). Additionally, members of VMT typically account for much of the volunteer work that goes into administering the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) series of contests, the regional Mathcounts competition, as well as tutoring during TJ’s JLC block.
The website for VMT is available at http://tjhsst.edu/vmt, which can also be accessed through the activities page on the TJ website.
Varsity Math Team is run by sponsors from TJ’s math department with help from an officer corps comprised of both elected and appointed members. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, the following people are responsible for the administration of VMT:
Specific job descriptions can be found under the “Elections” section.
Personal contact information can be found on the VMT website. Most questions regarding the team should be addressed to vmtofficers@gmail.com, which will ensure that they are forwarded to everyone listed above.
Varsity Math Team holds continual meetings on Wednesdays during both eighth period blocks. We also participate in the Virginia Mathematics League (VAML), which takes place during lunch on six select Tuesdays throughout the year. In addition to these, TJUSAMO/TJAIME is an after school event that is held throughout the year. It will take place from 4 PM to 6 PM on Thursdays during first semester, and then from 4 PM to 6 PM on Mondays during second semester. Occasionally, during first semester, we will hold after school practices from 4 PM to 6 PM on Thursdays that will replace TJUSAMO/TJAIME.
During second semester, we will hold weekly after school meetings to select teams and prepare for the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) from 7 PM to 9 PM on Thursday nights. This timing is designed to best allow members of sports teams to participate as well. Members without other obligations will be given access to a computer lab from 4 PM to 7 PM, but may do anything else they want to.
The complete schedule for the 2009 – 2010 school year is available on the VMT website under the schedule tab. You will be notified via the mailing list of any sudden changes as well as of periodic events (such as VAML).
Varsity Math Team uses a mailing list hosted on the TJ server. Only officers and sponsors may send messages on the mailing list, but anyone is able to receive announcements. You will be automatically signed up if you give the officers your email during the introduction blocks. To sign up otherwise, do so at http://lists.tjhsst.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vmteam (you can also get here from http://lists.tjhsst.edu by going to vmteam). If you would like to be removed from the mailing list, you can do so by sending an email to vmt-leave@lists.tjhsst.edu.
On the website, there is a tab for the “Wiki”. The VMT Wiki is exclusive to TJ students, as it will send a verification email to your TJ email (@tjhsst.edu). Members of math team are strongly encouraged to register on the Wiki to gain full access to its resources. Anyone is free to edit the Wiki, though editing is not compulsory. On the Wiki, you will be able to find many lectures and past contests, as well as their solutions.
At Varsity Math Team, we do a variety of contests written by officers and sponsors as well as other sources:
Additionally, we will do general individual/group practices without any predetermined format. These will only count for lettering rankings.
Please see the “when do we meet” section for times and dates.
TJAIME is an activity for students who wish to improve their general contest math skills to focus on improving their AIME performance. The structure for practices is fluid so that lecturers may meet the needs of students. Every five students will have a lecturer who will be instructed to address weaknesses for a particular group of students. The underlying goal of these practices is to help students advance to the USAMO.
TJUSAMO is an activity that occurs at the same time as TJAIME for students who are at the level where they can do well on the AIME and are ready to learn about the next level of math problems. The format of the lecture will vary from week to week, but generally the entire group (or small groups) will be working together to solve these very difficult problems. The purpose of TJUSAMO is to prepare students for the proof-based sections of contests, including the USAMO, MOP, TST, IMO, and power rounds for several of our travelling contests such as PUMaC, HMMT, and ARML.
ARML nights are officially from 7 PM to 9 PM to allow people with other commitments from 4 PM to 6 PM to attend. Students without other commitments will be given access to a computer lab (Room 242B), but they are also allowed to go anywhere. Students may place an order for pizza at $1 per slice, or they may go out to dinner on their own.
The actual contest that night features four sets of two problems each, known as the individual round, which takes 8 minutes per set. Presentations for the problems will be given by students who volunteer after each set. Afterward, we will have two six minute relay contests for relay teams of three people each. Then, there will be a 20 minute team contest for teams of approximately 12 – 15 people each.
Varsity Math Team hosts three different types of rankings: lettering, performance and ARML.
Lettering rankings are used throughout the year and feature all the non-after school activities we do, as well as service hours. Lettering rankings are used to determine who will receive a varsity letter for VMT. For lettering rankings, most contests are worth their raw value (making the maximum on FCMLs and NYCIMLs six, but the maximum on Mandelbrots fourteen), though this will not be true for some contests with unreasonably high maximums or lectures, which do not have a “raw value”. All lunch contests (VAML in particular) are considered bonus contests when calculating the lettering cut-off. The Percentage header for the lettering rankings is an average of the percentage of the total points scored on each contest, regardless of how much the contest was worth. The Total Score header is the total of the points on the contests scored, while the Grand Total header is Total Score plus the number of service hours.
Performance rankings are used solely during first semester to determine teams for the math competitions at Harvard/MIT and occasionally Princeton. Performance rankings use only certain contests (NYCIML, Mandelbrot, and “Performance Contests”) and they weigh them equally by normalizing them. Our normalization algorithm takes the average of the top 15 scores and divides every score by that average, in order to compensate for the varying difficulties and point values of contests. We will also include drops, which remove the lowest contests. The number of drops used will be equal to the number of contests divided by 4, rounded to the nearest integer (9 or 10 contests will have 2 drops, 11 contests will have 3 drops, etc.)
ARML rankings are used solely during second semester to determine teams for the ARML competition at Penn State. These rankings are computed in a similar manner to the performance rankings. For each night, we normalize the scores by dividing by the average of the top 15 scores. The same algorithm is used for eighth period contests. Approximately one third of the eighth period contests will be paired off and placed in as a nightly contest (so if we have 6 eighth period contests, your top 2 will be averaged and used as an additional nightly contest). The number of drops is computed the same way as for performance rankings, being the number of contests (including the paired eighth period contests) divided by 4 and rounded to the nearest integer.
At math team, it is possible to earn a Varsity Letter. A Varsity Letter is an award that comes with a pin for ‘letter jackets’ that you may buy from the school. Many sports offer letters as well. In order to earn the letter for VMT, you must meet the pre-designated grand total cutoff on the lettering rankings, as well as a community service requirement. The required number of points is equivalent to 2/3 of the total number of points possible, plus 20 points for service hours. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, there are 334 points available, making the cutoff 2/3 × 335 + 20, or 244. At least 20 and no more than 40 of your points must come from service hours. If the total number of points available changes, expect this cut-off to change as well.
Varsity Math Team participates in four competitions held nationally at select locations: the Duke Mathematics Meet (DMM), the Princeton University Mathematics Competition (PUMaC), the Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT) and the American Regions Mathematics League (ARML). The Varsity Math Team selects teams to travel to these competitions using various rankings.
The Duke Mathematics Meet (DMM or Duke) is held at Duke University every year typically in October or November. Due to the earliness of this competition, we are unable to hold an adequate number of performance contests to determine teams; instead, we are forced to use ARML rankings from last year. Teams at Duke consist of 6 members. This year, we are allowed to take four teams. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, Duke will be held on October 31st, 2009.
Website: http://www.math.duke.edu/dumu/mathmeet
The Princeton University Mathematics Competition (PUMaC or Princeton) is held at Princeton University every year. Princeton has the largest variability in competition dates, but typically it is held between November and January. For the later dates, we will use performance rankings to determine teams; for the earlier dates, we are forced to use ARML rankings again to determine teams. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, Princeton will be held on November 21st, 2009. Due to the earliness of the competition, we will use last year’s ARML Rankings to determine teams for 2009 – 2010. Teams at Princeton consist of 8 members. This year, we are allowed to take two teams with the possibility of a third.
Website: https://cgi.math.princeton.edu/mathclub/index.php/Princeton_Math_Competition_2009
The Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT) is held on alternating years at Harvard or MIT typically in February. For HMMT, we will use performance rankings to determine teams. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, HMMT will be held on February 20th, 2010. Teams at HMMT consist of 8 members. This year, we are allowed to take two teams with the possibility of a third.
Website: http://web.mit.edu/hmmt/www
The American Regions Mathematics League (ARML) is held at Penn State in late May or early June. ARML is the largest of the four competitions and has four sites around the nation at Penn State, Iowa State, the University of Georgia, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We will use this year’s ARML rankings to determine teams. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, ARML will be held on June 5th, 2010. Teams at ARML consist of 15 members. This year, we are allowed to take three teams.
Website: http://www.arml.com
The AMC series consists of the most prestigious individual contests in high school mathematics. For the 2009 – 2010 year, there are changes to the selection protocol for some of these contests; therefore, you should read the following regardless of your familiarity with the AMC series.
Website: http://www.unl.edu/amc
The AMC10 (for tenth graders and under) and the AMC12 (for twelfth graders and under) are the “open” contests, which are available to anyone who wishes to participate. There will be two AMCs in February – the AMC A and AMC B. The AMC A will be available to the entire school and students will be permitted to take either the AMC10A or the AMC12A, provided they meet the grade level requirements. This will be done during school on a Tuesday; students not taking the AMC will be given a designated study hall period. The AMC B is also available to the entire school, but it will be done during a Wednesday eighth period. Additionally, we will not offer the AMC10B, only the AMC12B. There will be 75 minutes for 25 multiple-choice questions (five choices). Each correct answer is 6 points, each blank answer is 1.5 points and each incorrect answer is 0 points. Therefore, a perfect score is 150. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, the AMC A will held on February 10th, 2010 and the AMC B will be held on February 25th, 2010.
Students who score well on the AMC10 and AMC12 will be eligible for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). The set cut off each year is 120 for the AMC10 and 100 for the AMC12, but in particularly difficult years, they will be lowered to allow at least 1% of all AMC test takers and at least 5% of all AMC12 test takers to qualify. The AIME is a 3 hour test with 15 questions. All the answers are integer answers from 000 to 999. This year’s AIME will be held on March 16th, 2010.
Students who do well on the AMC and the AIME will be invited to take either the United States of America Mathematics Olympiad (USAMO) or the United States of America Junior Mathematics Olympiad (USAJMO) (see the selection protocol below). These tests have the same format; the only difference is the difficulty. The USAMO is a two day test with three hard proof based questions to be solved in 4.5 hours on each of April 27th and 28th, 2010. The USAJMO is meant to be an introduction to proof style questions for younger students, and as such has approximately the same difficulty as the later problems on the AIME. The first and fourth problems on the USAMO (the first problem on each day) will be the same as the third and sixth problems on the USAJMO (the last problem on each day).
USAMO/JMO Selection Protocol
The top 12 scorers on the USAMO are named the USAMO Winners and the next 12 are named USAMO Honorable Mentions. The top performers on the USAMO and USAJMO are invited to the Math Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP or MOP), a three week summer program run at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Approximately the top 12 scorers are invited to the MOP to take the Team Selection Test (TST) as the black group. This number is subject to change. In 2009, of the twelve winners, two were not from the USA and the thirteenth place scorer had been in a tie with twelfth place so there were eleven people invited to take the TST (the ten American winners and the tied thirteenth place). The next approximately 18 American students who are not seniors are invited to MOP but not to take the TST as the blue group. Finally, approximately the top 30 freshmen scorers on the USAMO or problems 3 and 6 on USAJMO (favoring USAMO takers and using the other four USAJMO problems as tiebreakers) are invited to MOP as the red group.
The top six performers on the USAMO and TST are selected as the team for the International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO). The IMO is held in a different country each year (in 2010 it will be held in Kazakhstan) and the test is in the same format as the USAMO. Generally the easy problems on IMO are easier than the easy problems on USAMO and TST, while the hard problems are harder.
In May of each year, elections are held to determine the officer corps for next year. Every elected position is up for grabs, regardless of the number of returning incumbents. The elected positions are Captain, Co-Captain and Statistician, while the sponsors read applications for Finance Officers and appoint them. In order to vote at the elections, you must have at least one fourth of the total attendance. For the 2009 – 2010 school year, there are expected to be 54 contests, meaning a minimum attendance of 14 is required to vote. If you are ineligible to vote, you are still free to attend the elections.
Members running for an elected position must give a speech. There is no minimum duration of the speech, but there will be a maximum, depending on the number of candidates. The form of voting is approval voting; eligible members of the team may vote for as few or as many candidates as they’d like for each position, with equal value for every vote.
The following is a list of positions and their descriptions.
Have unlimited power over everything that goes on, but like to leave most of the decisions and specifics to the officers. This position is not available to students.
Group of people (1, 2, or 3) to be composed of people who are reliable, responsible, and can handle currency transactions quickly without error. In addition, the finance directors must be able to come up with ideas for raising funds for the math team. They must be willing to stay after school every Wednesday (or whenever we have VMT practice). The directors must be willing to work separately from the core officers. Application process: Submit your name and a paragraph on why you should have the job (include experience, ideas, anything else you think is useful). Then, the sponsors decide who (plural) gets the position.
Discuss policy, vote on policy, help set the calendar, enter scores, BE AT IMO, prepare for IMO and AMC. Must be active member of the team and familiar with the logistics of math team. All officers must be available to stay after school on Wednesdays (or whenever we have VMT practice). Very few exceptions.
Primary leader whose responsibility is to make sure that all math team activities throughout the year run smoothly. He/she must be able to communicate well in both oral and written media. The captain must be willing to communicate and coordinate with the other officers and sponsors. It is the captain's responsibility to make sure all things get done properly and on time. This means that the captain has the responsibility to make sure that the other officers complete all of their tasks as well. The captain must be aware of all math team related events at any time. He/she should write and present lectures, write practice problems, meet deadlines, and generate new ideas to better the team. He/she may not be the primary officer in any other organization.
Help the captain perform his duties. Subsidiary co-leaders, and have whatever powers and responsibilities come with that.
Maintain website, enter and manage scores for lettering, performance and ARML, enter and handle score corrections, service hours. Must be able to fix VMT network and website related issues at any time. It is essential that the statistician knows how to read somebody else's code and interpret what it does. Must be logical thinkers and quick learners. Must be familiar with LaTeX, or be willing to pick it up during the summer. Note: this position is absolutely essential to the operation of the math team, since we need access to and control over the proper databases. Statisticians should plan on being at all officer meetings.
There will be numerous service opportunities available to members (and non-members) throughout the year. Many math and math team related activities may count for service hours, but things not mentioned in this section should be approved with the sponsors first. Hours counted for math team may not count for any other organization, such as National Honor Society. Announcements about unlisted activities and announcements that elaborate on the listed activities will be sent periodically as they arise.
Prior to the IMO, which is held this year on November 14th, 2009, you may submit problems with solutions via the website using a special form featured on the home page. Any problems selected by the officers/sponsors for actual use will be grant the writer one service hour.
IMO is a 9 hour competition hosted by TJ for middle schoolers that spans from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Students may volunteer for just part of the time, or all of the time. Students will serve as either coaches (dealing with teams of 5 – 6 middle schoolers) or runners (who run from room to room delivering and picking up contests).
We also volunteer at the regional Mathcounts competition, which traditionally falls in February at Lake Braddock Secondary School. Students will either grade, tally scores, or enter scores.
Once a quarter, we hold pizza sales for fundraising in the Auditorium Lobby during the break between 7th and 8th period (2:05 PM – 2:20 PM).
Occasionally, we require people to help us stuff envelopes for various purposes, such as mass mailing.
You can earn service hours by bringing in food for sale during 8th period on Wednesdays. You can earn 1 hour for 24 items. Examples: 24 soda cans, 24 bags of chips, 24 wrapped pieces of brownies, etc.
Note that these items will all be sold for 50 cents. So if you bake cookies, please wrap them so that the value for one item will be 50 cents. Do not bring in smoothies, messy food, etc. Use your judgment. Please email vmtfundraisers@gmail.com with the type of food you're bringing before you actually bring them in.
Please use contact links at the bottom of every page on the VMT website. Avoid contacting the officers individually for these issues.