HiMCM 2020 · Problem set
The 2020 contest paired a classic multi-criteria decision problem (picking the best summer job offer) with a real conservation-finance problem (where to spend a fixed budget to preserve Florida's threatened plants).
| Contest dates | November 4 – November 17, 2020 (14-day window) |
| Participation | ~830 teams worldwide [illustrative] |
| Problem A | The Best Summer Job — rank multi-attribute job offers |
| Problem B | Funding Biodiversity Conservation — allocate a budget across Florida plants |
| Official results | 2020 HiMCM results & commentary |
Why this pair is great for a first weekend. Problem A is one of the most
approachable HiMCM problems ever — almost any team can write a defensible model in 24 hours.
Use it for a calibration run. Problem B is harder: it forces you to think about scarcity,
triage, and what "biodiversity" actually means as a number.
The two problems
Problem A
The Best Summer Job
A graduating senior receives several competing summer offers (pay, location, learning, travel time, fit). Build a model that ranks them and is robust to changing personal weights.
Open outline →
Problem B
Funding Biodiversity Conservation
A foundation has a fixed annual budget to protect Florida's threatened native plants. Recommend an allocation across species and ecoregions, with a defensible biodiversity score.
Open outline →
Why this year is good practice
- Problem A is the textbook MCDM warm-up. If you have never used AHP or TOPSIS, do this one first — it will make 2024-A and 2025-B feel familiar.
- Problem B teaches portfolio thinking. Allocating $X across species is isomorphic to allocating capex across renewable projects — same math, different context.
- Both reward a clean sensitivity story. Personal-weight ranges in A; species-priority weights in B.