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. One other rule that I neglected to mention is that 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 six scorers are all undergraduates, then each team will have three undergrads. I hope this is clear. 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.

WHAT PLATFORMS AND LANGUAGES WILL BE SUPPORTED?

The regional contest is typically held in a PC lab. The computers are standalone (not connected to a network), and come with blank floppies and a copy of Microsoft Visual C/C++ . 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 if I can get CodeWarrior running on these machines, then that might be the closest approximation. However, in the past I have let people log in to the Sweet Hall machines and compose and compile their code there. If this is the case again, I will support the judging of C or C++ code.

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.

OK, I'M INTERESTED! WHAT DO I DO NEXT?

See the page on How to Compete in the Stanford Local Contest to verify that you are qualified to compete, and follow the registration instructions (send me email).

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