Rules and Scoring
The test consists of 80 questions and is limited to only 10 minutes. There is no intermediate time signal given; at the end of 10 minutes the students must immediately stop writing (they are not allowed to finish incomplete answers started before the stop signal).
The questions must be answered in order; a skipped question is scored as a wrong answer.
Since Number Sense is designed to test students' mental math abilities, no calculators or scratch paper can be used during competition.
In order for a question to be scored as correct the exact answer must be given (no allowance for rounding), except where the question is preceded by an asterisk, in which case for the question to be scored as correct the student's answer must be within 5 percent of the exact answer.
Five points are awarded for each correct answer while four points are deducted for each wrong or skipped answer. However, questions not answered beyond the last attempted answer (defined as any problem where a mark or erasure exists in the answer blank for that problem) are not scored.
Another way to score the contest is to multiply the number of attempted problems by 5 and multiply the number of wrong problems by 9. Subtract the wrong number score from the total.
Read more about this topic: Number Sense (UIL)
Famous quotes containing the words rules and and/or rules:
“Here was a place where nothing was crystallized. There were no traditions, no customs, no college songs .... There were no rules and regulations. All would have to be thought of, planned, built up, created—what a magnificent opportunity!”
—Mabel Smith Douglass (1877–1933)
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)