Contest Format
All problems will be in short-answer format and will cover high school contest-level algebra, geometry, combinatorics, and number theory. This will include logarithms and complex numbers but no calculus concepts.
All answers will be in short-answer format and are integers. Appeals to problems can be made during the contest, but any decisions made by the tournament director are final.
CCAMB consists of 3 rounds: Team, Individual, and Lightning. The top 10 (or tied for 10th) contestants for the Individual Round will participate in the Tiebreaker round. Contest format is as follows:
| Team | Lightning | Individual | Tiebreaker | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duration | 40 min | 40 min | 75 min | 15 min |
| Questions | 10 | 5 sets of 4 | 15 | 4 |
| Collaboration | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Scoring
The Team Round is 40 minutes long and has 10 questions which are ordered roughly in increasing difficulty. Students will work together within their teams of 4. Each question on the team round is worth 1 point.
The Individual Round is 75 minutes long and has 15 questions which are ordered roughly in increasing difficulty. Students will work on these questions independently. Each question on the individual round is worth 1 point.
The Lightning Round has 5 sets of 4 problems, to be solved in a total of 40 minutes. Sets will be ordered roughly in increasing difficulty. Students will work in teams of 4. Initially, each team is given a set of 4 problems and will receive the next set of problems only after they submit answers to the previous set. The final set contains estimation problems, where the formula to calculate the score is given in the problem.
Each problem is worth 10, 12, 14, 16 points in sets 1, 2, 3, 4, respectively, and the maximum possible score for an estimation problem is 20 points.
Individual score is the number of questions correct on the individual round. Ties will be broken by a separate tiebreaker round.
Team score will be calculated based on individual, lightning, and team round results. First, we will calculate your team's individual round score as the average score amongst team members (notably, teams with less than 4 competitors won't be penalized). Then, we will normalize your team's score for each round to be between 0 and 1 by dividing by the maximum possible score on each round. Finally, we'll weight the rounds as follows: individual round 30%, lightning round 25%, team round 45%.
Prizes
There will be two divisions for prizes: Middle School (grades 6-8) and High School (grades 9-12).
Prizes will be given to the top 10 individual participants and the top 3 teams for the high school division and top 5 individual participants and the top team for the middle school division. More information on prizes will be announced later.