IYMC Logo

Rules and Data Policy

The IYMC competition enables you to unleash your potential, creativity, and math skills! The International Youth Math Challenge is one of the biggest online math competition for students from all around the world. Win awards and cash prizes, qualify for the final round, become official IYMC ambassador in your country, or join the international IYMC network for outstanding students!

Most Important Points

Vision and Values

§1: The International Youth Math Challenge is an international mathematics competition that enables students from all countries to prove their math skills and to unleash their creativity. Indeed, mathematics is an essential for the understanding of the world, scientific achievements, and progress, and for engineering and prosperity in our society.

§2: There is no doubt that math education is crucial for students of all ages around the world. IYMC aims to establish a global competition that is accessible to all students and teachers - youths receive the unique opportunity to challenge their skills, be encouraged and rewarded, and to enjoy the fascinating world of mathematics.

Elegibilitiy and Participation

§3: In order to be eligible to participate in IYMC you have to be at least 10 years old and you have to be a student (high school or university). There are no other restrictions and students from all grades and all countries are invited to participate! There are two age categories: (1) Under 18: Age from 10 to 17 years, (2) Over 18: Age from 18 years.

§4: Students from both categories will receive the same problems in all rounds, however, students that are 18 years or older (category Y) will have to reach more points (e.g. to qualify for the pre-final round, students from category J have to solve three problems correctly and students from category Y have to solve four problems correctly).

Prizes and Awards

§5: All participants (regardless of the results) receive participation certificates to honor their efforts. The best students can achieve the 1. prize, 2. prize, and 3. prize as well as special awards for the best students from each region. All participants that use professional computer programs (e.g. TeX) to write down their solutions receive a special honorary note on their certificates, since this skill is important for the future career of all students.

§6: Because IYMC is an international competition, we honor the best participants from each region of the world with a special certificate. All participants and finalists will receive a soft copy of the certificate via email (in order to protect the environment).

§7: We understand the crucial role of teachers and schools for mathematical education. Because of that, we award three school awards to honor the efforts of the teachers and the school (the awards are not connected to cash prize):

§7.1: (IYMC School Award for Most Participants) This award receives the school with the most overall participants of the qualification round to honor the efforts of the teachers for encouraging students to participate in mathematical competitions.

§7.2: (IYMC School Award for Most Finalists) This special award receives the school with the most students participating in the pre-final and final round.

§7.3: (IYMC School Award for Excellence) This award receives the school with many outstanding students that have achieved high results throughout the overall competition to honor the quality education. The organizers decide which school receives the award.

§8: Participating in international competitions is important for the personal development of students and it is a great achievement for your career. Furthermore, to participate in IYMC is a unique experience that will bring encouragement and motivation to all youths.

§9: Winners and former participants of IYMC become part of the IYMC network: This network consists of outstanding and talented students from all around the world! It enables you to get in touch with inspiring youths and to connect with students worldwide. If you have successfully participated you will receive all information from us.

Process and Deadlines

§10: The IYMC competition consists of three stages: qualification round, pre-final round, and final round. Each round has it's unique features to enable a challenging and interesting experience! The qualification round is the first stage and consists of five math problems: A, B, C, D, and E. The problems are available online on the official IYMC website. These math problems vary in topic, difficulty, and subject. The problems range from geometry to number theory to make sure that everyone finds interesting problems to work out.

§11: The problems will not only sharpen your mind but also challenge your math skills! All participants of the qualification round will receive participation certificates. You need to solve at least three problems (under 18 years) or four problems (over 18 years) correctly to qualify for the pre-final round. The submission deadline is available in the information flyer.

§12: In order to avoid connection issues, upload errors, and other problems, please be encouraged to submit your solution before the submission deadline.

§13: The solution file may be typed digitally (recommended) or it may be a clear picture of your handwritten notes. In case you have multiple pictures you may use an online tool to combine the pictures to a single file. Make sure that you write your forename and surname correctly. It will be used for the participation, finalist, and winner certificates.

§14: Please only use English letters (no Hindi, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.) to avoid misspelling!

§15: Participants that have solved the qualification round successfully are qualified to participate in the pre-final round. The problems will be more challenging, but even more interesting! The pre-final round consists of 15 different problems that vary in difficulty, points, and topic. All topics from geometry to number theory are included.

§16: There are three types of problems that give you two, four, and eight points.The pre-final round includes six basic problems (lowest difficulty). A correct solution to a basic problem adds two points to the total score. The pre-final round includes six advanced problems that are more difficult. A correct solution to an advanced problem gives four points.

§17: The pre-final round includes three advanced problems: These problems do not have a final answer, but the approaches and interim result give between zero to eight points. This problem type represents real examples of mathematical research and requires special originality and creativity. It is possible to reach up to 60 points in total.

§18: Students have to reach at least 25 points (under 18 years) or 35 (over 18 years) to qualify for the final round. (The limits may be increased or decreased depending on the year.)

§19: All participants that are qualified and that are registered for the pre-final round will receive the problems via email. From that day on you have four days to solve as many problems as possible! You can submit your solution online via a special submission form: You can choose if you would like to submit the solution as handwritten version or as computer typed document.

§20: If you succeed in the qualification round, you have the unique opportunity to participate in the pre-final round. In order to register, we will send you a registration form.

§21: This global competition is attached to many costs such as human resource, technical infrastructure, materials, and much more. Our sponsors cover most of the expenses, but to make this opportunity possible we ask the participants to cover the registration costs of 8 EUR. The registration costs are non-refundable.

§22: The registration costs are necessary to provide the resources for the evaluation of this competition and will exclusively be used for this global opportunity possible! You can participate in the qualification round and receive your participation certificate and not register for the pre-final round. However, in this case, you would miss this opportunity.

§23: Participants that have solved the pre-final round successfully are qualified to participate in the final round: a multiple-choice exam for which students have 60 minutes time. The final round consists of a single exam with 20 multiple-choice questions.

§24: The questions require math skills as well as knowledge about mathematical definitions. Finalists have 60 minutes for the exam! To every question there are four possible answers given (only one is correct). A correct answer equals one point. The awards and prizes are given to the finalists with the most points in the final round. The exam will (usually) take place in the school of each finalist supervised by a teacher. All finalists have to select a teacher (or another person-of-trust) who agrees to supervise the final exam.

§25: We will send all required information and the final exam to the selected teacher who has time to conduct the 60 minutes exam. We will provide a special online form for all teacher to upload the results without much effort! The teacher has to make sure that the finalist does not cheat and the teacher has to end the exam as soon as the 60 minutes are over regardless of the number of questions answered.

Further Information

§26: We provide all participants and teachers with a great tool to check the submission, the results, and the certificates. In order to prevent unauthorized access, you will have to enter the email and the birth year to check the submission and to view the results. On our official website, you find a list of materials with additional information and that you can use to promote IYMC. The IYMC Newsletters and alerts will inform you about upcoming challenges as well as general information and activities.

§27: You can subscribe to the newsletter on the IYMC website. In order to stay tuned and receive all recent posts and updates from IYMC make sure to visit our Facebook page. Also, we encourage you to share our post on social media to give everyone this great opportunity. If you have questions, comments, issues or feedback regarding IYMC feel free to send us a message via email. However, please note that it may take a while to respond to your individual request or problem.

Further Rules

§28: We give the very best to avoid technical issues. Technical issues can not be avoided and might happen. This includes email issues, the website may not be available, some features may not be available or working properly or show wrong information. We do not take any garuntee for not having technical issues and no claims (e.g. reevaluation, on prizes, on certificates) can be made because of technical issues.

§29: We give all the best to make sure that the evaluation is fair and correct. However, we can not give a garuntee for this and human and technical failures might happen. If failures are detected after the deadlines or the competition or the rounds are over, no claims can be made (e.g. such as reevaluation, on prizes, on certificates).

§30: The main communication and information tool is email. There may occur issues with the email communication. Participants have to make sure that emails can reach them. Nevertheless, we can not ensure that there are no other issues occurring with the email delivery or sending. All participants are reponsible to check the official website and to use the status check tool on our official website.

§31: All information and dealines provided in this terms, rules, and conditions, on our website, in emails, in flyers, and any other places may be edited and change without announcement and also after the competition or rounds. All participants are responsible to visit our website frequently to check for changes.

§32: There are no legal claims possible on any aspects of this competition (e.g. reevaluation, on prizes, on certificates, on information).

§33a: The main coordinators may disqualify participants from the competition. Participants that have found cheating will be disqualify from the competition. No refund of any registration costs will be granted to cheating participants.

§33b: In case of equal results in the final round, the main coordinators will decide how to procede: In general, the final winner will be decided based on the results in previous rounds.

§34: Exceptions from the elegibility are possible. The competition may be paused, stopped, or cancelled at any time and without reason.

§35: No reasons for any action (e.g. disqualification, cancelling of competition) have to be provided. We give our best to have a transparent and exciting competition. However, the coordinators and organizers are not required or responsible to hand out certificates or prizes at any time.

Site Usage, and Data Policy

§36.0: These terms and conditions govern your use of this website and the rules for programs, competitions, events, etc. conducted by this website or organization; by using this website and participating in events, you accept these terms and conditions in full. If you disagree with these terms and conditions or any part of these terms and conditions, you must not use this website, services, and material, participate in events or any other services provided by the website. Events mean any competition, project, offer, sub-website, article publishing, clicks, subscribing, submitting, applying, or other services.

§36.1: Every right to this website belongs to the organizers. The main responsible person and the organizer and coordinator is Fabian Schneider, see "Impressum" via the link on the bottom right corner for contact information. They are in charge of the content and cannot be replaced or removed without their own consent.

§36.2: This website may use cookies. By using this website and agreeing to these terms and conditions, you consent to our use of cookies for any purpose. In general, the events and the organizers do not take any warranty, responsibilities or duties as possible within the applicable law. If any of the following statements disagrees with the applicable law it does not affect any other rules or terms in this statement and everything else remains valid.

§36.3: Unless otherwise stated, the organizers own the intellectual property rights in the website and material on the website. Subject to the license below, all these intellectual property rights are reserved. You may view, download for caching purposes only, and print pages from the website for your own personal use, subject to the restrictions set out below and elsewhere in these terms and conditions.

§36.4: You must not: sell, rent or sub-license material from the website; reproduce, duplicate, copy or otherwise exploit material on this website for a commercial purpose; edit or otherwise modify any material on the website; redistribute material from this website except for content specifically and expressly made available for redistribution.

§36.5: You must not use this website in any way that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the availability or accessibility of the website; or in any way which is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity.

§36.6: You must not use this website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious computer software.

§36.7: You must not conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to this website without written consent of the organizers.

§36.8: You must not use this website to transmit or send unsolicited commercial communications. You must not use this website for any purposes related to marketing without written consent by the organizers.

§36.9: Access to certain areas of this website is restricted. The organizers reserve the right to restrict access to areas of this website, or indeed this entire website, at the organizer's discretion.

§36.10: If the organizers provide you with a user ID and password to enable you to access restricted areas of this website or other content or services, you must ensure that the user ID and password are kept confidential. The organizers may disable your user ID and password, or remove you from the events, without notice or explanation. If certificates, identification cards, etc. provided by the organizers lead to harm, financial losses, or legal consequences, the organizer does not take any responsibility.

§36.11: In these terms and conditions, “your user content” means material (including without limitation text, messages in any way, images, audio material, video material and audio-visual material) that you submit to this website, for whatever purpose. You grant the organizers and the events a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty license to use, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your user content in any existing or future media. Every picture, essay, text or data submitted by the user can be used under CC0 license by the organizers and the events. You also grant the organizers the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.

§36.12: Your user content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any third party's legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action whether against you or the organizers a third party (in each case under any applicable law).

§36.13: You must not submit any user content to the website that is or has ever been the subject of any threatened or actual legal proceedings or other similar complaints.

§36.14: The organizers reserves the right to edit or remove any material submitted to this website, or stored on the events servers, or hosted or published on this website.

§36.15: The organizers reserve the right to use the material for its own benefits. Therefore material can be used to excess other platforms (e.g Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat) to promote the events. Notwithstanding the organizers' rights under these terms and conditions in relation to user content, the organizer does not undertake to monitor the submission of such content to, or the publication of such content on, this website.

§36.16: This website is provided “as is” without any representations or warranties, express or implied. The events and the organizers make no representations or warranties in relation to this website or the information and materials provided on this website.

§36.17: Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, the events and the organizers do not warrant that: this website will be constantly available, or available at all; the information on this website is complete, true, accurate or non-misleading. Nothing on this website constitutes, or is meant to constitute, advice of any kind.

§36.18: The events and the organizors will not be liable to you (whether under the law of contact, the law of torts or otherwise) in relation to the contents of, or use of, or otherwise in connection with, this website: to the extent that the website is provided free-of-charge, for any direct loss; for any indirect, special or consequential loss; or any business losses, loss of revenue, income, profits or anticipated savings, loss of contracts or business relationships, loss of reputation or goodwill, or loss or corruption of information or data.

§36.19: These limitations of liability apply even if the events or the organizers have been expressly advised of the potential loss.

§36.20: You accept that, as a limited liability entity, the events and the organizers have an interest in limiting the personal liability of its officers and employees. You agree that you will not bring any claim personally against the events or organizers officers or employees in respect of any losses you suffer in connection with the website.

§36.21: You agree that the limitations of warranties and liability set out in this website disclaimer will protect the events's and organizer's officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, successors, assigns and sub-contractors as well as and above all the events and the organizers.

§36.22: If any provision of this website disclaimer is, or is found to be, unenforceable under applicable law, that will not affect the enforceability of the other provisions of this website disclaimer.

§36.23: You hereby indemnify the events and the organizers and undertake to keep the events and the organizers indemnified against any losses, damages, costs, liabilities, and expenses (including without limitation legal expenses and any amounts paid by the events and the organizers to a third party in settlement of a claim or dispute on the advice of the events and the organizers legal advisers) incurred or suffered by the events and the organizers arising out of any breach by you of any provision of these terms and conditions.

§36.24: Without prejudice to the events's and the organizor's other rights under these terms and conditions, if you breach these terms and conditions in any way, the events and the organizors may take such action as the events and the organizors deems appropriate to deal with the breach, including suspending your access to the website, prohibiting you from accessing the website, blocking computers using your IP address from accessing the website, contacting your internet service provider to request that they block your access to the website and/or bringing court proceedings against you.

§36.25: The events and the organizers may revise these terms and conditions from time-to-time. Revised terms and conditions will apply to the use of this website from the date of the publication of the revised terms and conditions on this website. Please check this page regularly to ensure you are familiar with the current version.

§36.26: The events and the organizers may transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with the events's and the organizer's rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions without notifying you or obtaining your consent. You may not transfer, sub-contract or otherwise deal with your rights and/or obligations under these terms and conditions.

§36.27: If a provision of these terms and conditions is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect. If any unlawful and/or unenforceable provision would be lawful or enforceable if part of it were deleted, that part will be deemed to be deleted, and the rest of the provision will continue in effect.

§36.28: These terms and conditions constitute the entire agreement between you and the events and the organizers in relation to your use of this website and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website.

§36.29: These terms and conditions will be governed by and construed in accordance with German Law and any disputes relating to these terms and conditions will be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of Judiciary of Germany. This document was partially created using a Contractology template available at www.contractology.com.

§36.30: The articles submitted may not be offensive, contain explicit content or contain illegal materials, or be inappropriate for the events. The jury decides whether an article is inappropriate. The name and the data given for the submission do not need to be true in any sense. All submitted data may be used for any purpose and may be published everywhere for any purpose.

§36.31: All emails provided may be used for any purpose and in any way. The organizers and the events are not obligated or bound to anything or any action. The organizers and the events may or may not on own behalf or interest: pay prize money; pay the stated amount of prize money; distribute or create certificate; provide any awards, data, or feedback to users of the website or participants in the events; continue or stop the events without reason.

§36.32: The decision of any jury or organizer cannot be accused not changed. The decisions of the organizers is final. The organizers do not need to justify or provide criteria towards any decision. The decisions of the organizers may be arbitrary or random. The organizers and the decision may not be independent.

§36.33: The events and website do not need to provide names of organizers members or the number of organizers members. Participants have no claim of any award, certificate or other. Fees may be requested at any time without announcement or notice. The events and the organizers do not need to respond to emails, or questions, or messages or any other contact attemp.

§36.34: Accounts may not be used by someone else accept for you. You are responsible to keep your account save. You are not allowed to create mutliple accounts or to create accounts with bad intentions (e.g. to harm others ot to spread wrong information). We do not ensure that the content on this website is virus free.

§36.35: The owner of this website may use all content on this website and submitted to this website for financial use (e.g. advertisement, selling products). This website uses Google Analytics to track activity and user statistics. By using this website you agree to this.

§36.36: These rules, terms, and conditions may change and may be edited without notice. It is in your responsibility to check from time to time whether you still agree to the rules, terms, and conditions.

§36.37: According to DSGVO of the European Union we would like to inform you about following: We save data for the purpose of statistiscal evaluation, email marketing, and to improve our products and services. The manager (“Datenschutzbeauftragte”) is Fabian Schneider, see Impressum on the bottom for contact information. Everything is in accordance with the German law. The data is received by the 1und1 webhosting infrastructur. The data expiration time is for profiles unlimited, to enable you access to your accounts. For all other statistical data the limit is 24 months. We use Google Analytics for the data evaluation. You have the right to be informed about the data that we save about you and you have the right that we delete the data. You have the right to complain at the data protection agency.

§36.38: By using this website, you agree that the exclusions and limitations of liability set out in this website disclaimer are reasonable. If you do not think they are reasonable, you must not use this website.

Additional Data Policy

§37.1: We save data for the purpose of statistical evaluation, email marketing, and to improve our products and services. The manager (“Datenschutzbeauftragte”) is Mr. Fabian Schneider (Im Neuenheimer Feld 133, 69120 Heidelberg, schneider(at)iymc.info, +491776762399)

§37.2: Everything is in accordance with the German law. The data is received by the 1und1 web hosting infrastructure. We save data such as viewed web pages or names of the retrieved file, date and time for statistical purposes and store them on the server without the data being directly related to your person. For the newsletter subscription we only save your email address and the limit is 24 months.

§37.3: At the contact form we save also your email address and your personal name if your name is stated by you. On behalf of the participants we just store name, email address, password, country, birthday, career status, name of your school/university/workplace, personal description, your profile picture and the optional information you state.Personal data, in particular name, address or e-mail address will be collected on a voluntary basis as far as possible. Without your consent, the data will not be passed on to third parties.The data expiration time is for profiles unlimited, to enable you access to your accounts. For all other statistical data the limit is 24 months.

§37.4: The data is not given to third parties that are not affiliated with us. You have the right to be informed about the data that we save about you and you have the right that we delete the data. You have the right to complain at the data protection agency.

§37.5: We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service from Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. To disable Google Analytics, Google has a browser plug-in available at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de. Google Analytics uses cookies , for data evaluation. These are small text files that make it possible to store specific information related to the user on the user's terminal. These enable an analysis of the use of our website offered by Google. The information collected by the cookies about the use of our pages (including your IP address) is usually transferred to a Google server in the United States and stored there. We would point out that on this website Google Analytics was extended to the code "GAT. _anonymizeIp ();" To ensure an anonymized collection of IP-addresses (so-called IP-masking). If the anonymization is active, Google will shorten the IP addresses within the Member States of the European Union or in other contracting States of the Agreement on the European Economic Area, which makes it impossible to draw conclusions about their identity. Only in exceptional cases the full IP address will be transferred to a Google server in the United States and shortened there. Google respects the Privacy Shield agreement and is registered with the U.S. Department of Commerce's privacy Shield program and uses the information collected to evaluate the use of our sites, reports to us and to provide other relevant services to us. You can find out more at http://www.google.com/ intl/de/ analytics/ privacyoverview.html.

§37.6: Our website uses features of Facebook Inc., 1601 S. California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA. When our Facebook plug-in pages are called, a connection is established between your browser and the Facebook servers. Because of this data is already transferred to Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, this data can be linked to it. If you do not wish to assign this information to your Facebook account, please log out before visiting our Facebook page. Interactions, especially the use of a comment function or the click of a "like" or "share" button are also passed on to Facebook. You can find out more at https://de-de.facebook.com/about/privacy.

We have used as source (besides others): https://www.anwalt.de/vorlage/muster-datenschutzerklaerung.php