Contest Schedule and Rules

Schedule of Events:

 7:45 a.m.-- 8:45 a.m. Registration (Dresser Auditorium)
 8:45 a.m.-- 9:15 a.m. Orientation (Dresser Auditorium )
 9:30 a.m.--12:30 p.m. Programming Contest (Computer labs)
 9:45 a.m.--11:30 a.m. Presentation to Advisors 
11:30 a.m.--12:30 p.m. Advisor Luncheon  
12:30 p.m.-- 1:30 p.m. Lunch (Hickey Dining Hall)
 1:30 p.m.-- 2:00 p.m. Awards Presentation (Dresser Auditorium)

Contest Rules:

1. The contest will consist of between seven and nine problems.  Each team will be provided with a  networked Windows XP computer in one of the computer laboratories on campus.  Each lab will have printing facilities and a contest assistant.  The computer and laboratory will be assigned during registration.

2. The team will be given a sealed envelope containing all of the programming problems during orientation.  The problems may be solved in any order.  Upon completion of a solution, the team will submit their solution electronically.  Note: Once submitted, a solution cannot be altered.

3. Problem clarification requests will be directed to the contest assistant in the lab who will forward the request to the Head Judge electronically.  If the Head Judge determines that a clarification is not necessary then this will be communicated to the team with the clarification request.  Otherwise the Head Judge will forward the request and his/her clarification to the assistant in each of the labs who will in turn post hard copies of both in the labs.

4.  A team may use either Java or C++ as the programming language.  Each machine will have programming environments installed to support both languages.  The Eclipse programming environment will be used for both Java and C++ development.  Machines and environments will be configured so that students will not need to create/manage projects, link separate files, etc.  The Java class library and the Java API (documentation for the Java class library) will be provided locally on each machine.  In addition, the five AP classes (apstring, apvector, apmatrix, apstack, and apqueue) will be provided for the C++ programming environment.  The EasyReader class will be provided for the Java environment.  The Eclipse environment will support Java SE 6 language features.

     (Advisors, please contact the Contest Director if you have any concerns about this.)

5. Programming problems will be worth two points apiece.  Testing problems will be worth one point each.  The team that earns the greatest number of points in the least amount of time will be declared the winner.  In the event that more than one team earns the same number of points in the same amount of time, the winning team will be decided by the solutions the contest judges judge to be the most elegant in terms of design and legibility (e.g., use of procedures and subroutines, variable names, internal organization of the algorithm). 

6.  Programs will be judged only on input data that meets the specifications given in the problem.  All input will be given through the standard input stream (System.in in Java, cin in C++).  All lines of output must be terminated by a newline character (through the use of println in Java or endl in C++). All output must be as described in the problem statement.  There should be no trailing spaces on any line.  All output (including error streams) will be judged.  Leaving user prompts, “debugging” statements, or other messages in the program will result in a submission being judged incorrect.

     Normally when running a C++ program the console window disappears upon program termination.  Therefore all of the C++ programs include extra lines of code at the end to read a character.  This character is not considered part of the input and the judges will supply that character as needed.  Removing this code will result in a solution being judged incorrect. 

7.  A correct solution for a problem will be determined by the contest judges testing the team's solution.  There is no partial credit:  a solution is judged to be either correct or incorrect.  Only one solution may be submitted for each problem.  Once submitted, a program cannot be altered.

8.  A solution will be scored incorrect if it runs for longer than 2 minutes on one of the judge’s machines without giving a correct solution.

9.  The competition will run from 9:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M.  Problem solutions must be submitted by 12:30 P.M. to be considered.

10. Judges will be selected by the Contest Director.  The decisions of the judges will be final.

11. A team may bring any books, manuals, notes, or program listings for reference during the contest.  A team may not bring programs on a diskette or USB drive or in any other form that is directly machine-readable.  Similarly a team may not bring a calculator or an additional computer (e.g. a laptop, a cell phone, or a PDA such as a Palm Pilot) to be used during the contest.  Students will NOT have access to the Internet during the contest and should not rely on using the Internet to view or download code.

12. AFTER a team has completed the contest and informed the student assistants in the room, they may use a USB drive to copy their work so that they may bring it home.  (If a team is seen attaching a USB drive to their computer at any time, the assistants in the room will mark that team as having completed the contest and no more solutions will be accepted from that team.)

                  Dr. Steven K. Andrianoff, Contest Director
                  Department of Computer Science
                  St. Bonaventure University
                  St. Bonaventure, NY   14778
                  Phone: (716) 375-2053
                  FAX: (716) 375-7618