BMT 2024 Online

The online, synchronous version of our flagship high school tournament! For those who are unable to travel long-distance to California, or weren't able to register for BMT 2024 due to capacity limitations, we're offering an online experience as well.

The online tournament will consist of an asynchronous Power Round on November 30–December 1, 2024, as well as the live event, including the Guts and Focus/General rounds on December 7, 2024.

BMT is intended for high school students, but is open to all students 12th grade and below, including advanced students at younger grade levels. You may register up to 6 students per team. There are no restrictions on how many teams/students can participate.

Registration Portal Logistics Page 12/5 Logistics Update

Registration, Waivers, and Pricing

You may register for BMT 2024 Online on ContestDojo any time until November 28, 2024 at 11:59 PM US Pacific Time.

Registration is performed on ContestDojo. Coaches may register up to 6 people per team, and ContestDojo will allow them to assign and modify teams up until tournament day. In addition, for BMT Online, students may also register and form teams with other students without a coach.

The fee for the online tournament is $8 per student.

All contestants are required to have their parent/guardian sign UC Berkeley’s consent waivers through this portal. Contestants will NOT be allowed to take the contest without having a signed liability waiver.

Any questions about the ContestDojo portal should be directed to us at team@berkeley.mt.

*For students facing financial hardship, please contact finance@berkeley.mt for a fee waiver. We will not honor refunds during late registration.

Student Eligibility

• Students must be in grade 12 or below to be eligible for BMT.
• Students do not have to be from the same school.
• Students must not have competed in a prior iteration of BMT 2024, including the California version or any of our satellites.
• Coaches may register as few or as many teams as they wish.

Teammate Finder

Students may register as a team of 1. However, it is beneficial to compete on a team of at least 4 due to our scoring guidelines. For students who do not have a full team, we have organized a Teammate Finder spreadsheet. Follow all outlined steps in the spreadsheet.

Online Tournament Logistics

BMT 2024 Online will take place in two parts:

• Asynchronous Power Round: November 30–December 1, 2024
• Live Event: December 7, 2024

For more details, see our logistics page.

Contest Format

Power Round (Async)

The Power Round is a proof-based team round. Contestants will answer a series of questions centered around a single topic not typically seen in competitive mathematics, culminating in incredible results in the field of that chosen topic. For all questions (unless stated otherwise), teams will need to provide a rigorous mathematical justification for their assertions in full sentences.

The topic for the Power Round will likely be at an undergraduate level, but no substantial previous mathematical background is expected.

Individual Round

For the Individual Round, students may choose to take either the General Test or two Focus Tests.

General Test (90 mins)

The General Test is an individual test consisting of questions across the various subjects that comprise the Focus Tests. This test is intended to be easier than the Focus Tests and is highly recommended for students with less prior contest experience.

Focus Tests (60 mins)

There are four Focus Tests of 10 questions across four subjects — Algebra, Geometry, Discrete (Combinatorics and Number Theory), and Calculus. Each student can participate in two Focus Tests.

Guts Round (75 mins)

The Guts Round consists of 9 sets of 3 problems across various subjects in math. The key feature of this round is that each set must be turned in before the next set is given. All teams can see a live scoreboard with their standings.

Scoring

Individuals are only ranked within the tests they choose to take. Individual Round scores are determined by the number of correct answers. Each correct answer is worth 1 point, i.e. there is no weighting among the problems.

Team scores are determined based on a combination of teams' scores on the Guts and Power Rounds, as well as the Individual Round scores of their team members. The weights are displayed in the table in summary table below.

When weighting team scores, scores for a given test will be normalized by either the average of the top 10 scores or the top 10% of scores, whichever represents more students/teams. Additionally, if a student takes the General Test instead of the two Focus Tests, their score will only count for half as many points as the Focus Test combinations would.

The asynchronous Power Round will not be counted towards the overall team score; we will have a separate ranking category for the Power Round.

Tiebreakers

A tiebreaking procedure is employed for top awards for each test. Ties are not broken for honorable mentions or calculating overall team scores.

To streamline the event, we have a new automatic tiebreaker policy this year, which works as follows:

1. First, problems are ordered from hardest to easiest, based on the number of correct submissions.
2. The n-th hardest problem is assigned a tiebreaking value of 2⁻ⁿ. For example, the hardest problem will have a tiebreaking value of ½, the second hardest problem will have a tiebreaking value of ¼, et cetera.
3. Each student's tiebreaking index is calculated as the sum of their original score and the tiebreaker values of the problems that they correctly answered.
4. Students are ordered by their tiebreaking index, determining their tiebroken rank.

In simpler terms, among those tied for the same score, whoever solved the hardest problem is placed the highest, followed by the one who solved the next hardest, and so on.

Additional Tiebreaker Procedure

If a tie remains on the Individual Round after the preceding automatic tiebreaking procedure -- i.e., if two students correctly answered precisely the same set of problems, then those students will participate in an additional Tiebreaker Round. Ties that remain on the Guts Round or Power Round will be tiebroken.

This 15-minute test will consist of either three (for the Focus Tests) or five (for the General Test) questions, and be scored primarily on correctness and secondarily on submission time; i.e. an earlier submission will be worth more than a later one with the same number of correct answers, but less than a later one with more correct answers.

Students may submit multiple times within the duration of the test, but only the last submission will be considered.

Round & Scoring Summary

Acceptable Answers

Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the acceptable answer formats document and common notions document for details on how their answers should be submitted. Answers not submitted in the listed formats will be graded as incorrect, even if equivalent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are calculators or other reference material allowed?

Graph paper and calculators are prohibited, but protractors, rulers, and compasses are permitted. Blank white scratch paper will be provided for all participants. All answers must be exact, reduced, and simplified. Illegible answers will not be graded. Cheating in any form will not be tolerated, and failure to comply with all rules may result in immediate and irreversible disqualification.

Can middle school students compete? What if I don't have a team?

Yes! BMT is open to any student in 12th grade or below, including those who haven't entered high school. While students are allowed to compete as individuals, we highly recommend that students compete on a team of at least 4 due to our scoring guidelines.

Will there be awards?

Although we will provide an official ranking as well as certificates for top-scoring teams, there will not be physical awards for the online tournament.