Preparing a solution paper

When preparing a solution paper for submission, teams must adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. Papers must be prepared in digital form, in English.
     
  2. Your submission should include a one-page Summary Sheet.
     
  3. Each page of the solution must contain the team identifier (containing both the team advisor control number and the team name) and the page number at the top of the page; we suggest using a page header on each page for example: Team 123456789 flying penguins page 6 of 13.
     
  4. The names of the students, advisor, or institution must not appear on any page of the solution. The solution must not contain any identifying information other than the team identifier.
     
  5. Solutions cannot exceed 20 pages. The maximum total length of a submission, including the summary sheet is 21 pages. Any appendices and references should appear at the end of the paper and do not count toward the 20 page limit.
     
  6. Partial solutions are acceptable. There is no pass/fail cut-off score, nor will numerical scores be assigned. The IM2C judges are primarily interested in a teams’ approach and methods.
     

These guidelines are extremely important.
Failure to comply with any preparation rule is grounds for disqualification.
 

Additional Recommendations

In order to produce and present the best possible solution paper, teams should also bear in mind the following points:

  • Conciseness and organisation are extremely important. Key statements should present major ideas and results.
  • Present a clarification or restatement of the problem as appropriate.
  • Present a clear exposition of all variables, assumptions, and hypotheses.
  • Present an analysis of the problem, motivating or justifying the modeling to be used.
  • Include a design of the model. Discuss how the model could be tested.
  • Discuss any apparent strengths or weaknesses to your model or approach.
  • Incorporate lengthy derivations, computations, or illustrative examples in appendices. Summarise these in the main report. Results must be explicitly stated in the body of the report