The contest will be held from 11:00am to 4:00pm, in the Math/CS Mac lab. FREE FOOD, pizza and snacks will be provided. Teams of three students (or less, if you like) will attempt to solve 5-8 programming problems. Participants should arrive at 10:30am to get instructions. The official languages for this contest are C, C++, or Java, but students are welcome to participate using any language they like, provided it is available on the lab machines. The team which solves the most problems will win (see details of scoring below). The top teams will continue on to the Regional Programming Contest in November, with a chance for the International Programming Contest, held in Stockholm in spring 2009
If you want to sign up and haven't yet, send e-mail to Ernesto
Queiros Nunes equeirosnunes@macalester.edu. Tell him
your name, your team members, if any, and what language(s) you want to use.
The contest typically requires that you read input from standard input and write output to standard output. Make sure that you know how to do that; ask for help ahead of time.
Take a look at the ACM's contest web site for information about the regional and international contests, on which our local contest is modeled. There are links to online collections of problems to practice with, and perhaps good advice for contest strategies.
Plan on arriving at 10:30am, as we will be giving out instructions, and food. The contest will begin promptly at 11:00am whether you are here or not.
You may bring with you any paper resources you like: books, notes, printouts of programs. You may not access the Internet during the contest, nor may you bring or access any electronic media, CDs, flash drives, etc..
You will be given one copy of the contest problems when the contest begins; you are on your honor to use no electronic resources, including code you may have written or files that may exist in your account.
We will use the PC^2 contest software for running the contest. You'll receive more information on the contest day. You submit the source code using this software, and you receive your responses from us similarly.
Snacks will be available in the Math/CS Reading Room throughout the contest. Pizza will be served there in the middle of the contest.
During the contest we will post clarifications of the problems and the current standings on the board in the Mac lab.
Each team of three gets one copy of the contest problems, and one computer on which to work. We reserve the right to decide which compiler you will use. Ask if there is some question about it.
You may use whatever standard libraries your language provides. That does not mean proprietary additions to the standard ones! But anything reasonably standard will be okay.
All input to your programs should be from standard input. All output should be to standard output. It is often easiest to put the input data in a file, and either redirect it to your program's standard input, or use the PC^2 software to test your program, which can do the redirection for you. We will provide assistance in doing this, if required.
When a team has a solution to one of the problems, it submits the solution through PC^2. The judges run the program on their set of test data and either accept or reject the solution.
If the solution is rejected, you will receive a responds that describes the problem: like "wrong answer," "program ran too long," "presentation error."
If the solution is accepted, then the time of submission is recorded as a number of minutes from the start of the contest. For every incorrect submission preceding a correct submission, we add a twenty minute penalty to the time. For example, if Team Tiger submitted an incorrect problem 3 at 11:15, then a correct one at 12:30, the time listed for problem 3 would be 120+20 = 140 minutes. If, on the other hand, Team Tiger never submitted a correct version of problem 3, they would receive no penalty points for the incorrect submissions.
The team which solves the most problems is the winner. If more than one team solves the same number of problems then they are ordered by the total of the times recorded for each successful submission, with the smallest total time winning.