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Named in honor of
Benoit Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of phy ...
, the Mandelbrot Competition was a mathematics competition founded by Sam Vandervelde, Richard Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky that operated from 1990 to 2019. It allowed high school students to compete individually and in four-person teams.


Competition

The Mandelbrot was a "correspondence competition," meaning that the competition was sent to a school's coach and students competed at their own school on a predetermined date. Individual results and team answers were then sent back to the contest coordinators. The most notable aspects of the Mandelbrot competition were the difficulty of the problems (much like the American Mathematics Competition and harder
American Invitational Mathematics Examination The American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) is a highly selective and prestigious 15-question 3-hour test given since 1983 to those who rank in the top 5% on the AMC 12 high school mathematics examination (formerly known as the AHSME ...
problems) and the proof-based team round. Many past medalists at the
International Mathematics Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre- university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, exce ...
first tried their skills on the Mandelbrot Competition.


History

The Mandelbrot Competition was started by Sam Vandervelde, Richard Rusczyk and Sandor Lehoczky while they were undergraduates in the early 1990s. Vandervelde ran the competition until its completion in 2019. Rusczyk now manages Art of Problem Solving Inc. and Lehoczky enjoys a successful career on
Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for ...
.


Contest format

The individual competition consisted of seven questions of varying value, worth a total of 14 points, that students had 40 minutes to answer. The team competition was a proof-based competition, where many questions were asked about a particular situation, and a team of four students was given 60 minutes to answer.


Divisions

The Mandelbrot Competition had two divisions, referred to as ''National'' and ''Regional.'' Questions at the National level were more difficult than those at the Regional level, but generally had overlap or concerned similar topics. For example, in the individual competition, the National competition would remove some of the easier Regional questions, and add some harder questions. In the team competition, the topic would be the same but the National level would be given fewer hints.


Results

Results would be published after each annual iteration of the contest, and in its final iteration, the results were published online with School leaderboards and Individual leaderboards divided by region and national. The School Results for the Spruce Region in 2018-2019 were posted o
this link
{{Cite web, url=http://web.mandelbrot.org/dynamic/standings/?tier=1&group=team&league=regional®ion=6&year=2018, title=The Mandelbrot Competition, website=web.mandelbrot.org


References


External links


The Mandelbrot Competition
Mathematics competitions