Many thanks to Karen Lee for running the grading scripts
and to Jerry Cain for helping administer the contest! Thanks also to Daniel
Wright and Cristian Cadar for debugging the problem set beforehand.
Solutions and test data are now available!
The following statistics on the problem set are provided by David Arthur:
Problem # accepted % accepted % wrong answer % time limit exceeded cake 6 30.00% 35.00% 15.00% election 26 70.27% 24.32% 0.00% nash 14 58.33% 41.67% 0.00% triangle 11 23.91% 63.04% 8.70% brackets 9 33.33% 37.04% 29.63% repeatless 18 40.00% 26.67% 33.33% planet 4 100.00% 0.00% 0.00%The contest is over! Congratulations to all participants! The first and second Stanford ACM teams for 2004-05 are (unofficially):
Once again, Stanford will be hosting a local programming contest to select the students who will represent Stanford at the 2004 ACM Pacific NW Regional Contest, and hopefully at the 2005 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
The local contest will be an individual contest (students compete as individuals, and not on teams. The top six individuals will be grouped to form two teams of three students each to represent Stanford at the regional contest.
The top two teams at the regional contest qualify for the International Contest Finals to be held April 3-7, 2005 in Shanghai, China. The winning students not only bring fame and glory to their university, they also win hefty scholarships ($$) and plenty of free software.
The contest pits teams of three with one computer against a host of problems in a limited time-frame. Typically, six or more problems are posed with five to six hours to solve as many as you can. These problems can generally be solved by careful analysis and application of algorithms taught in undergraduate computer science. Some are quite challenging. For examples, see the problems from previous years of this contest.
To qualify for a spot on the Stanford ACM team:
This year, even if you're not eligible to compete for a spot on the Stanford ACM team, as long as you have a Leland account, you may participate in the local contest anyway! Come join the fun!
STEP ONE: Send an e-mail to indicating that you will be competing so that I can get a rough idea
of how many students to expect. Please also mention whether you are an undergraduate or graduate
student, and whether you are eligible for a spot on the Stanford ACM team. (You can compete even
if you don't do this, but you may not get your choice of terminals.)
STEP TWO: Come to Gates room B02 (the computer cluster in the basement) on Saturday,
October 9th at 12:00 pm. I will go over the rules of the contest, set you up with a practice
problem, and begin the contest promptly at 1:00 pm.
STEP THREE: Code like mad!!! The contest will last 4 hours. There are some great
practice problems to try in the archives (previous contest pages). Come and help make a
good showing for Stanford. I hope to see you there!
compile error
run-time error
time-limit exceeded
wrong answer
presentation error
Success in the ACM programming contest requires a combination of coding speed and algorithmic ability. To make sure that you're ready for the contest, make sure that you are comfortable with the programming environment for the local contest (see Rules and FAQ above). Contest problems typically involve dynamic programming, search, simulation, geometry, and more.
The best way to prepare for ACM-style programming problems is to practice! The Universidad de Valladolid Problem Set Archive has tons of problems that you can solve and an online judge for grading your solutions automatically. Other problem set archives may be found here and here. Also, check out the problems from previous contests in the section below. Although it uses a different competition format, the online TopCoder weekly matches provide very useful preparation for ACM; one of the most useful features of the website is the ability to look at other contestant's solutions to problems from previous contests.
2003 Stanford Local Programming Contest
2002 Stanford Local Programming Contest
2001 Stanford Local Programming Contest
2000 Stanford Local Programming Contest
1999 Stanford Local Programming Contest
1998 Stanford Local Programming Contest
1997 Stanford Local Programming Contest
1996 Stanford Local Programming Contest
1998-2003 Pacific Northwest Regional Contests
2003-2004 ACM ICPC Regional Contests
2002-2003 ACM ICPC Regional Contests
2001-2002 ACM ICPC Regional Contests
2004 ACM ICPC World Finals