MOP Academic Handbook

Evan Chen

June 2018

Contents

1 MOP activities 2
1.1 Dorm and orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Morning classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Tests (Tue/Thu/Sat afternoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Assembly meeting (Wed afternoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.5 Study session (Mon/Fri afternoon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.6 Free time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.7 Test review and evening seminars (evening, optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.8 Staff office hours (evening, optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.9 Check-in and curfew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.10 Other activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Calendar and schedule 5

2.1 Brief overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Time table for a typical weekday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3 Time table for a typical Saturday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4 Time table for a typical Sunday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5 Resnik dining hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Practice test information 7

3.1 Problems and test format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Submission instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4 Write-ups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.5 Exam PDF’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4 Links 8
4.1 Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2 Feedback form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

A Team selection information 9

A.1 Selection process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
A.2 Grading and appeals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

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§1 MOP activities
This section contains a description of what the activities in the MOP schedule are, and
what you should expect of them. The actual schedule (describing which activities are
on which days) is detailed in Section 2.
Activities are all mandatory unless noted otherwise.

§1.1 Dorm and orientation

MOP students are housed in the Stever dormitory at Carnegie Mellon.
Orientation is held on the first night of camp, in the lobby of the Stever dorm, at 9pm.

§1.2 Morning classes

On most weekdays, there are two morning classes, scheduled from 8:30am to 10:00am
and 10:15am to 11:45am. The location of these classes depends on your color group.

Group Classroom
Red Gates 5222
Green MMA 14
Blue Wean 8201
Wean 8220
Black Gates 4101
Gates 4102

You might notice there are two classrooms listed for the blue and black groups. The
intention is that during each time slot, there will be two parallel classes offered, and you
can pick which one you want to go to. Note that some classes might be offered more
than once, and you of course should not go to the same class twice, so plan accordingly.
There is one caveat to this: for each pair of parallel classes, the number of students in
one class should not be more than twice the number in the other class. In other words,
each class should have at most 23 of the students in the group.
This availability restriction is first-come first-serve, so that gives you a bit of incentive
to come to class on time.

§1.3 Tests (Tue/Thu/Sat afternoon)

MOP features several full-length tests, lasting 4.5 hours each, with three or four prob-
lems. Even though many of the tests do not count for anything, they are an important
part of the MOP experience; please take them seriously.
You will encounter three different types of tests:

• The “MOP tests” are administered on weekdays by color group. These are denoted
“Test N ” in the schedule for N = 1, 2, . . . .

• A two-day mock olympiad is given on Saturday afternoons. For returning students

(those who have attended MOP before), this is the “mock IMO”; for new students
(those who have not attended MOP before) this is the “ELMO”. These are denoted
“Mock N ” and “ELMO N ” in the schedule for N = 1, 2.

• The TSTST takes place towards the end of the program. It is a three-day exam
taken by all students, and is used for team selection (see Section A).

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In 2018, all tests are administered from 1:15pm to 5:45pm.

You can find detailed information about the practice tests in Section 3. The locations
for the tests are as follows.

Exam Color Location

MOP tests and TSTST Red/green groups MMA14
Blue group Gates 5222
Black group Gates 4101
Int’l group Gates 4102
Mock IMO USA black group Gates 4102
Other USA students Gates 5222
ELMO New students and int’l MMA14

§1.4 Assembly meeting (Wed afternoon)

An assembly meeting is scheduled after lunch on Wednesdays in place of study session,
starting at 1pm. This will be held in MMA14. During the meeting we make camp-wide
announcements.
Wednesday afternoons may be more varied, and I don’t know exactly what will happen
on those days yet. Possible activities range from sponsor talks, to the “philosophy”
panel, and so on. It is not uncommon for IMO and EGMO team training to be held on
Wednesday evening, either. We’ll announce at the assembly meeting what is happening.

§1.5 Study session (Mon/Fri afternoon)

On Monday and Friday, the class time from 1:15pm to 2:45pm is designated as time to
work on problems independently.1 (Of course we expect to be lots of math outside study
session as well!) There will be five rooms, each with a topic focus.

Room Topic for study session

Wean 8220 Geometry
Wean 8201 Combinatorics
Gates 4101 Geometry
Gates 4102 Algebra / Number Theory
Gates 5222 Combinatorics

The idea behind study session is to give you time to work on the many MOP materials.
Examples of things you can do during study session:

• Work on problems from earlier classes or tests (or anywhere, really), either inde-
pendently or in groups.

• Swap handouts or test problems with students and instructors (especially from
other color groups).

• Learn about other math-related topics from other students or instructors.

Typically, the grader leading the study session will also prepare a few problems in the
topic, if you want something new.

1
This is vaguely inspired from MathCamp’s TAU, but the implementation is much more formal.

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§1.6 Free time

The schedule has substantial free time built into it (for example, after study session on
most weekdays). Our hope is that you will use this time to get to know your fellow stu-
dents, keep thinking about math, organize activities, and so on. Graders and instructors
can also use this time to organize activities as well.
Examples of activities that have been organized in the past include plank count-
down (MathCounts countdown where you hold a plank position), singing troupe, double-
elimination fish tournament, K-pop dance, and so on.
To help facilitate the organization of activities, a bulletin board is located in the lobby
of Stever. The staff will supply papers and pins, and students are invited to use the board
to post announcements or sign-ups for activities there.

§1.7 Test review and evening seminars (evening, optional)

On any day with an exam, we will hold test review sessions at 7:00pm to present the
solutions to the problems. The location is either MMA14 or Stever as follows:

MMA14 ELMO, TSTST, and USA practice tests (problems VWXYZ).

Stever Mock IMO, and international practice tests (problems PQR).

The staff will discuss all the problems and solutions to that day’s test. Test review is
optional; written solutions will be provided later on (see §3).
On other evenings, an optional seminar is often held in Stever lounge (also at 7:00pm).
The exact schedule of these will be posted with the class schedule. These are talks in
interesting math topics by instructors or graders.

§1.8 Staff office hours (evening, optional)

Many of the staff live in the dormitory with the students, and are available for informal
office hours in the evenings, to chat about anything (math, life, or otherwise). We
encourage students to take advantage of this.

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In the past, we’ve often also organized scheduled “one-on-one” sessions to give students
a chance to talk with staff about whatever is on their mind. Of course, these are
completely optional. We’ll announce sign-ups for any such sessions at the camp.

§1.9 Check-in and curfew

The check-in window for each evening is 9:30pm-10:30pm. During this time, the resi-
dential assistant (RA) will be located in the lobby of Stever to take your check-in. You
are required to check in each evening so the staff know you have not been eaten by
bears. After you have checked in you should not leave Stever.
Curfew (lights-out) is at midnight on Sunday through Thursday, and at 1am on Friday
through Saturday.

§1.10 Other activities

Homework review On the first afternoon block, graders will review the MOP homework
problems (provided before camp) in color groups, instead of study session, from
1:15pm-2:45pm. These will be run by graders in regular classrooms.

Philosophy Held after the second assembly meeting. This is a broad group discussion.

Kennywood Optional field trip to Kennywood amusement park. More details will be
provided at assembly and the evening before the actual trip.

§2 Calendar and schedule

§2.1 Brief overview

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th
Opening AM class AM class AM class AM class AM class Mock 1
Hwk rvw Test 1 Assembly Test 2 Study ELMO 1

10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th

(Free) AM class AM class AM class AM class AM class Mock 2
Study Test 3 Assembly Test 4 Study ELMO 2
Philos
17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd
(Free) Kennywd AM class AM class AM class AM class TSTST 3
TSTST 1 Assembly TSTST 2 Study

24th 25th 26th

(Free) AM class AM class Departure
Study Closing

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§2.2 Time table for a typical weekday

Start End Event Location
7:30am 8:30am Breakfast Resnik
8:30am 10:00am AM Class 1 See §1.2
10:15am 11:45am AM Class 2 See §1.2
11:45am 1:15pm Lunch/free Resnik
1:15pm 2:45pm Study session (Mon/Fri) See §1.5
5:45pm Testing (Tue/Thu) See §1.3
2:00pm Assembly (Wed) MMA14
5:45pm 7:15pm Dinner hours Resnik
7:00pm 8:00pm Main test review (opt.) MMA14
8:00pm Int’l test review (op.) Stever lounge
8:00pm Seminar (opt.) Stever lounge
9:30pm 10:30pm Check-in Stever lounge
12:00am Curfew (Mon-Thu)
1:00am Curfew (Fri)

§2.3 Time table for a typical Saturday

Start End Event Location
11:00am 1:15pm Brunch Resnik
1:15pm 5:45pm Testing See §1.3
5:45pm 7:15pm Dinner hours Resnik
7:00pm 8:00pm Test review ELMO / TSTST (opt.) MMA14
8:00pm Test review mock IMO (opt.) Stever lounge
9:30pm 10:30pm Check-in Stever lounge
1:00am Curfew

§2.4 Time table for a typical Sunday

Start End Event Location
11:00am 2:30pm Brunch hours Resnik
5:45pm 7:15pm Dinner hours Resnik
7:00pm 8:00pm Seminar (opt.) Stever lounge
9:30pm 10:30pm Check-in Stever lounge
12:00am Curfew

§2.5 Resnik dining hours

Weekdays Weekends
Meal Start End Start End
Breakfast 7:30am 9:30am (not provided)
Lunch/brunch 11:00am 2:30pm 11:00am 2:30pm
Dinner 5:45pm 7:15pm 5:45pm 7:15pm

On weekends, we will provide cereal and milk in Resnik for anyone awake before
10:00am, so that early risers don’t have to be hungry.

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§3 Practice test information

§3.1 Problems and test format
Each set of MOP tests will have several problems indexed by Roman letters V, W, X, Y,
Z, P, Q, R. The Mock IMO and ELMO will have problems numbered 1-6. You needn’t
worry about the meaning of the letters and numbers; on each test, just (try to) solve all
the problems that you are given.
All MOP test problems are confidential until after the second day of the IMO,
since many are from the IMO Shortlist, and are used by other countries up until and
including the IMO.
All tests are 4.5 hours. Each problem is worth 7 points. The only allowed materials
are ruler, compass, writing utensils, blank paper. Protractors and graph paper are not
permitted.

§3.2 Submission instructions

On each page, you should leave a 2cm margin, and write your name, color group, full
problem number, and page number in the upper-right hand corner. Here, a full problem
number consists of the test number followed by the Roman letter for that problem. So
an example of an acceptable heading would be:

Kelvin Amphibian
Green
Problem 3W
Page 1 of 8

The page totals are “per problem”, as separate problems are graded separately.

§3.3 Scoring
• The mock IMO, ELMO, TSTST are graded olympiad-style, out of 7 points.

• On MOP tests, in addition to a math score (out of 7) as usual, the graders also
assign a style score, from the set {0.0, 0.1, . . . 1.0}. We write “7/0.8” to denote
a math score of 7 and a style score of 0.8. The style score2 is supposed to be a
measure of the quality of the write-up and the elegance of the solution. In practice,
it is mostly here for (i) cultural preservation, and (ii) the amusement of the graders.
In other words, don’t take it too seriously.
A style score of 0.7 is typical (and “default”), and 0.6 and 0.8 are fairly common
as well. On the high end, a style score of 1.0 is given only a few times a year. On
the low end, you have to really upset the grader in order to get a style score less
than 0.5.
The MOP score for a problem is the product3 of the math and style scores.

2
There’s a saying that your style score is the probability you would earn all points you deserve at the
IMO before coordination.
3
In particular, the style score is irrelevant for solutions with a math score of zero, and consequently it
is not uncommon for graders to jokingly assign scores of 0/1.0 or 0/0.1.

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§3.4 Write-ups
For each problem on the MOP tests, we will scan one student’s solution4 from the test,
and at the end of the camp compile these scans to form a “solutions manual” for that
year’s camp. Treat it as a memento.
If for some reason you really don’t want to have your solutions in the manual, then
please let the graders know before the first test.

§3.5 Exam PDF’s

After the test review for each test (MOP test or mock IMO), a password-protected PDF
will be uploaded containing the problems and the solutions for that test. The password
and URL for these files is printed on the physical test given at MOP.
These files are for internal use only, and should not be distributed outside of MOP.

§4 Links
§4.1 Website
A small camp website is hosted online at

http://web.evanchen.cc/mop/.

It contains a copy of this handbook, as well as links to some other useful documents,
such as the official class schedule, a map of CMU, a list of students and instructors, and
more.

§4.2 Feedback form

Before I forget later, the following is a link to the end-of-camp MOP survey. We will
remind you towards the end of camp to fill it out. The URL is:

https://goo.gl/forms/cfVDUPneQEZUbDa32

Your feedback is useful for helping improve MOP for future years.
In addition, you should feel free to send any comments to evan@evanchen.cc at any
point in time.

4
This is a departure from previous years, when students would be asked to write-up solutions separately
after the test.

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§A Team selection information

This section contains information about the selection for IMO, EGMO, and RMM.
Contestants participate in several exams, described at brief in Table 2.

Exam Approximate Dates Problems Time

TSTST Late June 9 4.5h × 3
December TST Early December 3 4.5h
January TST Mid-January 3 4.5h
RMM Day 1 Late February 3 4.5h
APMO Mid-March 5 4h
USAMO Late April 6 4.5h × 2

Table 2: Synopsis of team selection tests.

§A.1 Selection process

1. All students at MOP take the TSTST. In addition, students not at MOP may
participate remotely in TSTST under any of the following circumstances:
• Any student invited to that year’s MOP but who declines the invitation.
• Any student who is in the top 12 IMO selection indices of the previous year
(after graduating seniors are removed), either before or after the USAMO.
• Any student who is in the top 8 EGMO selection indices of the previous year
(after graduating seniors are removed), or who attended the EGMO.

2. The top approximately 24 scores on TSTST (after graduating seniors are removed)
form that year’s IMO selection group, and qualify for December TST, January
TST, RMM Day 1, APMO.

3. The EGMO selection group shall follow one of two procedures depending on the
results of the TSTST.
(a) If at most two female students qualify for IMO selection, then those 0-2 stu-
dents automatically qualify for the EGMO team. (The intention is that we
want these students to focus on IMO selection.) The remaining female stu-
dents form the EGMO selection group, and the selection process for these
students will be independent of that for the IMO (the exams in December
and January will be different than those given to the IMO group).
(b) If three or more female students qualify for the IMO selection group, then no
“automatic qualification” occurs. Instead, all female students comprise the
EGMO selection group, and they will take the same exams in December and
January as the rest of the IMO selection group.

4. The RMM team is determined by the index

TSTST + 2 × (Dec + Jan) ≤ 147.

The top four indices among students who have not attended either RMM or IMO
in the past are invited to the USA team for RMM. They will participate at the
physical competition in Romania. (The team’s papers from Day 1 will be re-graded
anonymously for the purposes of TST.)

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5. The EGMO team is determined by the index

TSTST + 2 × (Dec + Jan) ≤ 147.

The top indices in the EGMO selection group comprise the EGMO team (with
automatic qualifications from item 3 taking precedence).

6. We expect contestants in the IMO group to qualify for the USAMO through that
year’s AMC and AIME as usual. The IMO team leader may grant discretionary
exceptions, but this is not guaranteed.

7. The IMO team is determined by the index

Dec + Jan + RMM Day 1 + 0.6 × APMO + USAMO ≤ 126.

The top indices in the IMO selection group comprise the IMO team.

§A.2 Grading and appeals

ID numbers For this selection cycle, each USA student at MOP will be given an ID
number, which is a positive integer between 100 and 999 whose prime factors are all
from the set {2, 3, 5, 7}.5 Please don’t lose your ID: we will use it not only for TSTST
but also for the year-round TST.
For USA students, the grading of TSTST is double-anonymous: grading is done by ID
number rather than by name, and the names of graders are not returned to you. Each
paper is read at least twice.

Distributions returned to students For December, January, RMM, APMO, students

will receive by email the distribution of their score on each problem. We will usually
also publish statistics about each individual problem.
For TSTST, students can ask for their score distribution by problem, but the physical
papers are not returned. Some statistics will be posted in person along with the list of
qualifiers.

Appeals For December, January, RMM, APMO, we permit students to appeal their
scores within 48 hours of receiving them.
Appealing is not the same as IMO coordination.6 It is meant for situations in which
you think the solution has been misinterpreted (i.e. the grader has made a mistake) or
you think there is a clerical error (i.e. you submitted a paper but got recorded as blank).
In particular, appeals should usually be reserved for cases where the student believes his
or her solution is essentially correct, but received a low score.
After an appeal, the graders may adjust the score for that problem, either up or down,
and that score cannot be further contested.

5
Apparently these numbers are easier to remember than the prime numbers used in the past.
6
Examples: If a solution is poorly written (stylistically!) and the graders do not understand it the first
time, we will not reverse the score after an appeal in which typos/mistakes/etc. are clarified, out of
fairness. Similarly, disagreement with grading criteria is not a valid reason to protest.

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