What this site covers
Everything Barry needs in one place. Each module is a stand-alone page, but they're also stitched together as weeks in the six-month plan. Pick where to start based on what you need today.
About the contest
Rules, dates, team composition, judging tiers, and what "Outstanding" actually means.
Anatomy of a winning paper
Summary sheet, assumptions, model, sensitivity, letter — section by section with judge commentary.
Modeling techniques
The dozen methods that keep showing up: AHP, TOPSIS, regression, ODEs, Monte Carlo, ARIMA, optimization.
Python toolkit
NumPy, SciPy, pandas, matplotlib, statsmodels, networkx, SimPy — snippets you can paste and adapt.
Past problems 2018–2025
Every problem with a full restatement, a modeling outline, key formulas, and pitfalls.
Original mock problems
Five problems written in HiMCM style with solution sketches, rubrics, and self-grading checklists.
Six-month plan
Week-by-week schedule from June 2026 through the contest weekend in November.
Resources & references
Books, courses, official PDFs, datasets, glossary of contest jargon and modeling vocabulary.
Suggested reading order
- Get oriented. Read About the contest end-to-end and skim two recent problems on the Past problems page so you have a sense of what 25 pages of analysis actually look like.
- Learn the paper. The structure of a HiMCM solution is fixed. Go through Anatomy of a winning paper next so every later technique has a place to land.
- Build the toolkit. Work through the modeling catalogue on Techniques and the matching code in the Python toolkit. Do small drills as you go.
- Practice on real problems. Pick a past problem and write a 5-page partial solution in a weekend. Compare against the judges' commentary linked from each problem page.
- Run a full mock. Once a month between July and October, do one mock problem under contest-like conditions (no outside help, 4 days, write the full paper).
- Final push. The six-month plan ramps to a dress-rehearsal in late October and the live contest Nov 4–17.
A few things judges actually reward
From COMAP's published judges' commentaries on Finalist and Outstanding papers:
- Simple models that you fully understand beat sophisticated models you bolt on from the internet. Pick math you can defend out loud.
- Assumptions tied to the model. List each assumption with its justification, then point to where in the model it's used.
- Sensitivity analysis. Show which parameters matter — by simulation, by partial derivatives, or by re-running with perturbed inputs.
- Strengths and limitations. Honest weaknesses signal modeling maturity. Hiding them never works.
- A real Executive Summary. Written last, after the paper is done, summarizing the actual results — not just the methodology.
- A non-technical letter that doesn't just paraphrase the executive summary. Different audience, different voice.
Each of these is unpacked in detail on the paper page.