HMC ICM/MCM Information

Harvey Mudd College fields teams for the annual Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) and the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM).

Important Times and Dates

The contest runs from 5:00 PM PST on Thursday, February 9, 2012, through 5:00 PM PST on Monday, February 13, 2012.

Rooms in use by contest participants will be reserved for their use.

Important Links

Resources at Mudd

The math (and CS) department generally provide some amount of support for contest participants in the form of computers or printers.

Math Computers

In addition to any workstations in the room that you're working, participants may access some math-department systems over the network. Linux workstations/servers that you can use include:

  • shell connects to random machine in scientific-computing lab
  • ponder shared compute server
  • didjabringabeeralong workstation in CS conference room
  • snapcase workstation in Clinic lab
  • burleigh workstation in Clinic lab
  • snouty workstation in Clinic lab
  • stronginthearm workstation in Clinic lab

Remember that some of these machines will be in use by other contest participants, so try to be considerate. Remember that the person sitting in front of the machine is entitled to the full power of the machine, so try to find systems that aren't otherwise in use or negotiate with your fellow competitors to make sure everyone gets what they need.

Software

All math Linux systems have access to Maple, Mathematica, and MATLAB. In addition, the workstation didjabringabeeralong has SAGE, an open-source, community-supported mathematical system that is meant to be a free replacement for the commercial packages.

Working Remotely

If you have your own machine, you can log into one of the department's machines and run software there, and display the software on your machine. For Linux machines, you can use ssh -Y you@host.math.hmc.edu to connect, and SSH will forward your display to your local machine.

For Macs, you'll need to make sure you have Apple's X11 application installed (see our Mac OS X support page for details), but otheriwse it works just like it would on a Linux machine.

For Windows machines, you will need to (1) install an X server, and (2) use PuTTY or a similar tool to forward your X connection from the remote server. See our Windows support page for more details.

LaTeX Document Class for Preparing Your Report

We provide a LaTeX class for typesetting your solutions to the MCM or ICM problems. If you're using one of the mathematics department's Linux systems, the icmmcm class file will be in TeX's path. If you're using another system, you can copy the files from /shared/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/icmmcm/.

Copy the blank-template.tex to your working directory and edit it to reflect your team's number (assigned by the contest administrators) and the letter (A or B for MCM; C for ICM) of the problem you're working on.

(You can also grab the files from our Subversion repository, at http://svn.math.hmc.edu/latex/hmcmath/classes/icmmcm/trunk/.)

If you have a chance beforehand, you might want to try typesetting the icmmcm-sample.tex file so you can see what the report will look like.

Important Note on Submissions

Be sure not to mention your names, the name of your advisor(s), or the name of your school anywhere in your report. If you do, your team will be disqualified!