2005 Stanford Local Programming Contest

Saturday, 8 October 2005
Gates B02 (basement computer cluster) and Gates B21 (PUP cluster)
12:00 pm to 5:00 pm

News and updates

Congratulations to all participants! The first and second Stanford ACM teams for 2005-06 are

First team

Andrew Lutomirski (undergraduate) -- solved 5 problems
Sehyuk Park (graduate) -- solved 4 problems
David Gobaud (undergraduate) -- solved 3 problems

Second team

Ryan Williams (undergraduate) -- solved 3 problems
Antoine El Daher (graduate) -- solved 3 problems
James Connor (undergraduate) -- solved 3 problems

Also, congratulations to the top 3 "just-for-fun" competitors:

Andreas Sundquist (graduate) -- solved 3 problems
Benjamin Lynn (graduate) -- solved 3 problems
Stephane Laidebeu (graduate) -- solved 3 problems

Teams consist of the highest ranking eligible individuals.

Many thanks to David Arthur for writing several of the problems used in this contest! Thanks also to David Arthur, Tom Rokicki, and Dan Woods for debugging the problem set beforehand! Finally, thanks to David Arthur, Tom Rokicki and Jerry Cain for helping to adminster the contest!

Judge solutions and test data are now available! Judges' comments on each of the problems are currently being prepared and will be available soon.

	area	box	doit	drop	nim	rsi	scrabble	stones
Input	area.in	box.in	doit.in	drop.in	nim.in	rsi.in	scrabble.in	stones.in
Output	area.out	box.out	doit.out	drop.out	nim.out	rsi.out	scrabble.out	stones.out
Comments	area.txt	box.txt	doit.txt	drop.txt	nim.txt	rsi.txt	scrabble.txt	stones.txt
chuongdo	area.cc	box.cc	doit.cc	drop.cc	nim.cc	rsi.cc	scrabble.cc	stones.cc
darthur	area.cc	box.cc	doit.cc	drop.cc	nim.cc	rsi.cc	scrabble.cc	stones.cc
rokicki	area.java	box.java	doit.java	drop.java	nim.java	rsi.java	scrabble.java	stones.java

Statistics on the problem set, thanks to David Arthur:

Problem  | #   #AC | %AC   %CE  %PE  %RE   %TL    %WA    | Fastest Avg
---------+---------+-------------------------------------+----------------
area     | 1   0   | 0.00  0.00 0.00 0.00  100.00 0.00   | -       -
box      | 46  1   | 2.17  2.17 0.00 0.00  0.00   95.65  | 209     209.00
doit     | 26  11  | 42.31 0.00 0.00 3.85  3.85   50.00  | 92      147.73
drop     | 20  0   | 0.00  0.00 0.00 15.00 20.00  65.00  | -       -
nim      | 42  14  | 33.33 7.14 0.00 9.52  4.76   45.24  | 29      86.14
rsi      | 1   0   | 0.00  0.00 0.00 0.00  0.00   100.00 | -       -
scrabble | 22  13  | 59.09 4.55 0.00 4.55  0.00   31.82  | 13      49.85
stones   | 17  3   | 17.65 0.00 0.00 0.00  17.65  64.71  | 126     166.00
---------+---------+-------------------------------------+----------------
TOTAL    | 175 42  | 24.00 2.86 0.00 5.14  6.29   61.71  | 13      99.67

At 1:00 pm, the contest problems will be posted here in PDF and PS format.

The final contest scoreboard can be found here.

Instructions for the contest and a practice problem have been posted in PDF and PS format. Please try these out before the contest to make sure that the contest scripts are working properly for you.

This year, the Regional contest will be held at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA on Saturday, November 5.

For those who earn spots on the Stanford ACM team, we will hold weekend team practices on 10/15 or 10/16, 10/22 or 10/23, and 10/29 or 10/30.

What is this all about?

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 San Antonio, TX. 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 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.

Am I eligible to compete?

To qualify for a spot on the Stanford ACM team:

For more details, go here.

NOTE: 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!

How do I compete?

STEP ONE: Send an e-mail to indicating that you will be competing so that we can get a rough idea of how many students to expect. Please also mention

whether you are an undergraduate or graduate student,
whether you are eligible for a spot on the Stanford ACM team, and
whether you would prefer to work at Gates or in your own room

STEP TWO: Come to Gates room B02 (the computer cluster in the basement) on Saturday, October 9th at 12:00 pm. We will go over the rules of the contest, set you up with a practice problem, and begin the contest promptly at 1:00 pm. You may also work from your own room by sshing to any of the Leland systems machines (saga, elaine, etc).

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. We hope to see you there!

Rules and FAQ

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 graduate student. However, if the top scorers are all undergraduates, then each team will have three undergrads. (CORRECTION: The one graduate student max per team rule was removed from the official ACM eligibility requirements this year.)

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 solutions (i.e. code that has been entered and/or compiled before the contest begins may NOT be used). You 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?

At last year's regional contest and world finals, the programming environment consisted of Red Hat Linux 9.0 with all standard editors and compilers as well as some optional IDEs. 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. The Gates B02 contains mainly PC systems, so contestants must "ssh" to the Sweet Hall machines and compose and compile their code there. Students with CS accounts are encouraged to work from the nearby PUP cluster. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with these machines BEFORE the contest so that you are comfortable with editing and compiling code in this manner. If you're using a Windows machine, consider using the VNC utility for running remote XWindows sessions. We will support the judging of C, C++, and Java code.

How many problems will there be?

We haven't decided yet. The problems and solutions this year are still being developed. There will most likely be 5-7 problems.

What about scoring?

We'll explain more at the contest, but the judging proceeds as follows:

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:
A student may submit as many solution attempts ("runs") for a given problem as he/she wishes.
The students who solve the most problems in the allotted time 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.

How do I prepare for this contest?

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.

Previous contests

Problem writers: Chuong Do and David Arthur
Local contest organizer: Chuong Do
E-mail: