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IS THE LOCAL CONTEST AN INDIVIDUAL OR TEAM EVENT?
Students participating in the local contest will compete as
INDIVIDUALS. The top scorers will be grouped together to form the best
possible teams. There will be two teams of three students each.
In each team, only ONE team member is
allowed to hold a baccalaureate degree. Effectively, this means that each team
will likely consist of two undergraduates and one grad student. However, if the
top scorers are all undergraduates, then each team will have three
undergrads. In past years, it has usually come down to all
of the undergrads competing against each other for 4 spots, and all of the grad
students competing for the remaining 2 spots. This is why it is important that
we have a strong UNDERGRADUATE turn-out for the contest, so that we can fill
those spots with the best students.
CAN YOU BRING NOTES/BOOKS TO THE CONTEST?
Yes. You can bring textbooks, notes, printouts of code, and any other written
material you want. However, you may NOT bring any MAGNETIC media (disks). In
other words, you will have to MANUALLY TYPE into the computer any code that you
use in your solution. (i.e. code that has been entered and/or compiled before
the contest begins may NOT be used). To my understanding, you also MAY NOT use
any electronic devices (ie. calculators, laptops), since you will have a fairly
sophisticated "calculator" sitting in front of you. You also MAY NOT
browse the web and download code. At the regional/final contest, all
you'll have is a PC plus any printouts/books/notes that you carry with yourself.
WHAT PLATFORMS AND LANGUAGES WILL BE SUPPORTED?
The regional contest is typically held in a PC lab with development
environments. It would be great if we could replicate these
conditions here at Stanford for the local contest, but we will have to make do
with what we have. Gates B02 is a Mac lab, and people will log in to the Sweet Hall machines and compose and compile
their code there. I will support the judging of C or
C++ code. If contestants request it, I can also judge Java
programs, since this languages is also allowed at the regionals and
world finals.
HOW MANY PROBLEMS WILL THERE BE?
I haven't decided yet. I'm still writing the solutions I will use for
judging. There will most likely be 5-7 problems.
WHAT ABOUT SCORING?
I'll explain more at the contest, but the judging proceeds as follows (just
like the regional contest):
- Solutions to problems submitted for judging are called runs. Each run is
judged as accepted or rejected, and the contestant is notified of the results.
Rejected runs are marked as follows:
syntax error
run-time error
time-limit exceeded
incorrect
output
incomplete output
excessive output
output format error
- A student my submit as many solution attempts ("runs") for a given problem
as they wish.
- The students who solve the most problems in the 3 hour period win. In the
case of ties (which are almost assured), the student with the lowest total
time wins.
- The total time is the sum of the time consumed for each problem solved.
The time consumed for a solved problem is the time elapsed from the beginning
of the contest to the submittal of the accepted run plus 20 penalty minutes
for every rejected run for that problem regardless of submittal time. There is
no time consumed for a problem that is not solved.
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