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How do I choose which students will take the Team Play?
Our basic philosophy is to offer coordinators as much flexibility as possible, since circumstances are likely to change with little notice on a typical school day. Prior to each round the coordinator will designate groups of four students to comprise each registered team. (Schools may register up to three teams for the Team Play.) These students, which can vary from one round to the next, could be the top individuals from the Mandelbrot Competition, or the students with the greatest interest in working on the Team Play, or fixed groups of four chosen by the coordinator for the whole year.
Each registered team is identified by appending a single digit to the four-letter school code. For instance, a school with code BROT enrolling a single team would write BROT1 at the top of their response sheets; if the same school had three teams they would write BROT1, BROT2, or BROT3. Note that team BROT1 will not necessarily obtain the highest score on a given round. (Read how cumulative Team Play scores are computed.)
We encourage coordinators to divide all remaining interested students into groups of four so that they may tackle the Team Play as well. However, please only mail in the official papers for grading. Since these papers are not returned, we strongly encourage coaches to make a copy of students' work for reference when comments and scores are posted at the web site.