A Mock MathCounts is a contest intended to mimic an actual MathCounts exam. A number of Mock MathCounts competitions have been hosted on the Art of Problem Solving message boards. Some are made by one community member, while others may be sourced from a group or the general community. Then they are administered to the AoPS community. Different users may have a different way of participating: some may require signups, while others do not.
Mock MathCounts' are usually very popular in the months leading up to the actual MathCounts competition. There is no guarantee that community members will make Mock MathCounts' in any given year, but it's usually a good bet that someone will.
Tips for Writing a Mock MathCounts
Here are some tips to write a good mock MathCounts:
- Have multiple people work on the problems. Getting more people will get variety and prevents mocks from having too many problems from one subject. Having a group is also good so they can discuss which problems are good or need improvement, and fix errors. More than one person working on a mock can get the test done faster and often times better quality.
- Get people to proofread it. Have someone to look over the problems, make sure they are appropriate in difficulty and order, and understandable by the general audience.
- Get people to work on the problems. Sometimes the actual problem difficulty may vary from what it appears when the problem is actually worked on.
- Don't be afraid to harshly criticize your problems. Usually criticism is what helps the mocks get better!
- Once the test has been released, it is usually a good idea to keep the answers from being released at the same time. This can help prevent cheating, and also gives the problem solvers more time to make sure the problems are solved correctly.
- Make sure the problems are original. The AoPS community does not want to waste time seeing a collection of boring, cliche problems that in principle are identical to an existing problem from a past MathCounts, with a few numbers modified.
- If you are really out of problems, it is fine to get problems from past competitions. If you do so, choose with caution, beware of copyright, and choose from lesser known competitions. Don't choose a problem from a recent MathCounts competition; choose one from a trivial competition few people have heard of.
- Add variety. Nobody wants to see a round with 15 counting problems or 20 algebra problems. Generally, algebra and geometry should have a larger emphasis than number theory and counting. The target round should have problems from all four subjects.
Basically, getting many people to work on the mock is a great way to help improve the quality, though it is not always the case if everyone gets off task and "helpers" becomes "parasites".
Past Mock Mathcounts
Listed below are several Mock Mathcounts' which have been hosted over AoPS in the past.
Difficulty is rated on a scale from 0 to 5, where 1 is school level and 4 is national level. If you take a contest, please help with rating it.
Also note that "author" is the user who started the mock competition, not his or her helpers.
2006
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
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Author
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Difficulty
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Initial Discussion
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Problems
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Answers
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Results/Discussion
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| Mock Mathcounts National
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forthegreatergood
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Initial Discussion
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Problems
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| MATHCOUNTS simulation
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mathman523
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Problems
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2014
2015
See Also
