320 The UMAP Journal 24.3 (2003) Reflections of the Triage Judges Lots of good papers made it to the final judging The summary made a significant difference. A majority of the summaries were poor and did not tell the reader the results obtained A large number of teams simply copied and pasted their introductory paragraphs, which have the different purpose of establishing the background for the problem The biggest thing that caught the judges' eye was whether or not the team paid attention to the questions asked in the problem. A number of teams addressed what they knew but didn't consider the real question-they got cut quickly e The next deciding factor was whether a team actually did some modeling or simply looked up a few equations and tried to shoehorn those into the prob lem. We looked for evidence that modeling had taken place; experiments were good to see A final concern was the quality of writing-some was so poor that the judge couldn 't follow or make any sense out of the report Triage and final judges pet peeves include Acronyms that are not immediately understood and tables with columns headed by greek letters Definition and variable lists that are embedded in a paragraph Equations used without explaining terms and what the equation accom- Copying derivations from other sources-a better approach is to cite the reference and explain briefly Approaches by the Outstanding Papers Six papers were selected as Outstanding submissions because they developed a workable realistic model from their assumptions and used it to answer all elements of the stunt person scenario o made clear recommendations as to the number of boxes used, their size and how they should be stacked, and offered a generalization to other stunt persons wrote a clear and understandable paper describing the problem, their model, and results; and320 The UMAP Journal 24.3 (2003) Reflections of the Triage Judges • Lots of good papers made it to the final judging • The summary made a significant difference. A majority of the summaries were poor and did not tell the reader the results obtained. A large number of teams simply copied and pasted their introductory paragraphs, which have the different purpose of establishing the background for the problem. • The biggest thing that caught the judges’ eye was whether or not the team paid attention to the questions asked in the problem. A number of teams addressed what they knew but didn’t consider the real question—they got cut quickly. • The next deciding factor was whether a team actually did some modeling or simply looked up a few equations and tried to shoehorn those into the prob￾lem. We looked for evidence that modeling had taken place; experiments were good to see. • A final concern was the quality of writing—some was so poor that the judge couldn’t follow or make any sense out of the report. Triage and final judges’ pet peeves include: • Acronyms that are not immediately understood and tables with columns headed by Greek letters. • Definition and variable lists that are embedded in a paragraph. • Equations used without explaining terms and what the equation accom￾plished. • Copying derivations from other sources—a better approach is to cite the reference and explain briefly. Approaches by the Outstanding Papers Six papers were selected as Outstanding submissions because they: • developed a workable, realistic model from their assumptions and used it to answer all elements of the stunt person scenario; • made clear recommendations as to the number of boxes used, their size, and how they should be stacked, and offered a generalization to other stunt persons; • wrote a clear and understandable paper describing the problem, their model, and results; and