Competition Date & Time
Starting Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 00:00 (midnight) UTC, and extending for 244 hours until Friday, April 27, 2012 at 04:00 AM UTC.
Winners will be announced on Monday April 30, 2012 around 05:00 PM UTC on the competition web site.
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Official Rules
- The Purple Comet! Middle/High School Mathematics Meet is designed for teams of students from anywhere in the world enrolled in middle school or high school (or local equivalent), or home-schooled students who are at a comparable level.
- The contest is a team competition. Students on the same team are encouraged to work together to solve contest problems.
- A team may have as few as one student and as many as six students.
- Teams may enter in one of eight categories:
- Middle School Level for small school teams
- Middle School Level for large school teams
- Middle School Level for mixed school teams
- Middle School Level for non-competitive teams
- High School Level for small school teams
- High School Level for large school teams
- High School Level for mixed school teams
- High School Level for non-competitive teams
- Small school teams, large school teams, and mixed school teams are competitive, and team members must meet age, grade, and school size criteria. The contest results for the top teams in these categories are posted on the contest web site, and special award certificates are provided to members of winning teams with other teams receiving certificates of participation. Membership on non-competitive teams is not restricted in any way. Contest results for these teams are not posted, and team members receive certificates of participation. The non-competitive categories are designed for teams that wish to participate in the Purple Comet! Math Meet but do not want their results compared to other teams.
- All competitive Middle School team members must be students who have not yet completed the eighth grade (or local equivalent), and who are under the age of 16, as of the date of the competition.
- All competitive High School team members must be students who have not yet graduated from secondary school (or local equivalent), and who are under the age of 20, as of the date of the competition.
- Competitive teams may register in the large school category, the small school category, or the mixed team category. All students from a large school team or a small school team must be enrolled as students in the same school. The school size should be determined from the size of the student population from which potential team members have been drawn. Some schools are spread out over a campus comprising several buildings. If a team could be comprised of students from across the entire campus, then the entire campus should be considered when calculating the school size. Mixed teams are designed for home schooled students, students who all attend the same regional mathematics club, or some other non-school organization. All the students from a single mixed team must have residences within 150 miles (240 kilometers) of each other.
- High schools qualify as small if they have no more than 1200 students. Middle schools qualify as small if they have no more than 400 students.
- No student may participate on more than one middle school team or one high school team, although a student eligible for the middle school level may compete both on one middle school team and on one high school team.
- A school may enter as many teams as they like. Each team is required to have access to its own computer with an Internet connection. If two teams at the same school need to share a computer, then the two teams are required to compete at different times with one team completing the entire competition before the other team starts.
- Team members need not all be from the same school. There are four categories of competition for each test level, one for teams made up exclusively of students from a single small school, one for teams made up exclusively of students from a single large school, one for teams made up of students who do not all attend the same school, and the non-competitive category for teams that participate but do not compete for awards.
- Each team must have an adult supervisor (over the age of 20) present during the competition. An adult supervisor may supervise more than one team.
- Team names may be edited if deemed inappropriate by the contest judges or if there are two teams with the same name.
- The contest will be conducted via Internet web form. Teams may fill in solutions to the contest problems during the prescribed time for their team (60 minutes for middle school teams, 90 minutes for high school teams) following the start of their contest clock. At any time during the competition, contestants can click the SUBMIT button to submit their team's entry. Answers may be submitted multiple times by the same team, but only the last set of answers received before the contest ends will be accepted and graded. Partial submissions are accumulated. Consequently, if a team submits an answer to problem 1 and later wises to submit an answer to problem 2, there is no need to resubmit the answer to problem 1.
- Contestants are allowed to work on the contest problems as a team. No help may be provided by persons not on their team. Team members and team supervisors must not reveal or discuss contest problems with anyone other than their immediate team members until the contest officially ends at Friday, April 27, 2012 at 04:00 AM UTC.
- All problems in the competition are designed so that they can be worked without the aid of calculating devices. On the other hand, participants are permitted to use calculators or computers, for example, to write a computer program in order solve or better understand a problem. Team members may also refer to books, computer programs, or other reference materials available to them locally as long as the students seek this material without aid from persons not on their team.
- Participants may not use computers or any other communication devices to seek help with problem solutions from people or Internet resources outside of their own team members.
- Ideally, if computers are made available, they should be different from the computer used to access the competition website, and should be physically disconnected from the Internet during the time when students are actively working on problem solutions. If this is not possible, then adult supervisors are asked to monitor participant use of computers carefully.
- Teams may enter either as a Middle School team or a High School team. The competition problems for Middle School teams will be less in number and of a lesser degree of difficulty than those for High School teams.
- The decision of the competition judges is final.
- The official time is the time as determined by the purplecomet.org server.
- Any circumstances not covered by these rules may be decided at the discretion of the competition designers.
- These rules may be amended from time to time without notice. The rules in effect at the start of the competition are the official rules of the competition.
- The contest is free to all participants, although your gifts to help cover the expenses of running the event are welcome. Learn how you can help.
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More Information
Contest Summary
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Designers/Judges
 | Dr. Jonathan Kane, Contest Coordinator and Primary Competition Designer |
Professor of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, UW-Whitewater
| Dr. Titu Andreescu, Competition Designer |
Former Head Coach of the US Math Olympiad Team and Director of the MAA American Mathematics Competitions, and Associate Professor of Science/Mathematics Education, UT-Dallas.
| Dr. Bennette Harris, Technical Support and Web Site Design |
Associate Professor of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, UW-Whitewater
