Computer Science and Information & Interactive Technologies Department
2010 CSIIT Computer Programming
Competition
Competition Rules and Procedure
Projected Schedule
See the schedule for the day of the contest.
1. Team Composition
Registration including information about participants, coaches, and high-school contact information must be completed by April 9th.
All student members must be currently enrolled at the high school they represent.
Any schools may bring a maximum of 4 teams, but no more than 3 students per team. The other students are welcome but are not allowed to participate in contest. If a team participant has special needs (e.g. disability related), the team must inform MC as early as possible, but definitely by April 9th, to allow MC enough time to accommodate the request.
2. Conduct of the Contest
a. Contestants are expected to arrive at the designated room ( BTA) by 3pm, at which time they can sign in.
b. Upon signing in, each team will be assigned to one of the PC's in a designated laboratory. Contestants may use the 30 minutes or so before the competition to familiarize themselves with the computing environment.
c. The competition is based on a set of programming problems. Each problem is a specification of a computer program (i.e., a description of a relationship between inputs and outputs) that can be solved by developing a program that meets the specification. Each team's objective is to solve as many problems as possible, as quickly as possible and correctly. Instructions describing how contestants are to submit a program for judging will be provided before the contest. Submissions will be carried out electronically.
d. Teams will be allowed to bring at most 2 books to the contest area. Teams may not bring their own calculators, computers, laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, mobile devices or other electronic media.
e. Teams may not accept assistance or advice from anyone not authorized to provide such assistance. No persons other than judges, contest officials, and host site staff will be authorized to give advice. Contest judges will clarify problem statements as needed, and the host site staff may advise on system related queries, such as explaining system error messages. Advisors/Coaches do not participate in the contest except as observers.
f. A contestant may request clarification of a problem statement. If the judges determine that an error exists in the statement of a problem, a clarification will be issued and made available to all teams. If no error exists in the statement, the answer to the clarification will be made available only to the team that submitted it. If the members of a team do not fully understand the description of a contest problem, they may submit to the judges a query asking for clarification. A query is for the purpose of asking a specific question about a contest problem. A query should not ask for a rewording of an entire problem description, nor should it ask for advice on how to attack a problem or for confirmation that a particular approach to attacking a problem is sound. Nor should a query ask for assistance in making use of an operating system utility, a text editor, a compiler, etc. MC student volunteers will be on hand for providing such assistance. Any query that is deemed by the judges to be irrelevant or inappropriate (e.g., because it asks for advice on how to attack a problem) will not be answered. The team that submitted the query will be notified that its query will not be answered.
g. Submission: Only one source code file for each program in JAVA may be submitted.
Input/Output: Detailed directions will be handed out at the contest.
Text Editing: Several simple text editors will be available, including Notepad, Eclipse and TextPad.
Printing: There is a printer in the lab that will be available for use by contestants.
Judged Run: A judged run is defined as the execution of a problem solution submitted by a contestant that is performed by a judge and uses input data supplied by the judge. This data is never seen by the contestants. Prior to the contest, the judges will develop a set of test data for each contest problem. To evaluate a submitted program, the judges will apply the program to the appropriate test data. Thus, all programs submitted as potential solutions to a particular problem will be applied to the same test data.
h. The length of the Contest is two hours; however, the Contest judges have the authority to shorten the Contest in the case of unforeseen difficulties. Should the contest duration be altered, every attempt will be made to notify contestants as soon as possible and to assure uniform impact on all teams.
i. Any attempt to defeat or alter the contest environment may result in disqualification.
j. Any attempt to obtain assistance from external sources (including through the Web, the Internet, or by email) will result in disqualification.
k. Assistance from Coaches: Coaches may assist their teams during the orientation/practice session prior to the contest, but they are not to communicate with their students during the contest, unless some unusual circumstance arises.
3. Computing Environment
Each team will be assigned to at least one Pentium-based PC.
The computers in this lab will be running Microsoft Windows. Contestants may write programs in Java. Sun JDK version 1.6 or newer (as a DOS command line program) will be used for processing Java programs under Windows. Eclipse 3.5 is also available for Java programming and is recommended for JAVA. No other programming environment or language may be used.
4. Scoring
a. The Contest judges will be solely responsible for determining the correctness of judged runs and the winners of the contest. They are empowered to adjust for and adjudicate unforeseen events and conditions. Their decisions will be final.
b. The winner is determined by the total points earned.
5. Changes to the Rules
Changes may be made to these rules at the discretion of the Contest Director at any time prior to the start of the Contest. If changes are so made, all contestant teams will be provided with an updated copy of the rules prior to the start of the Contest.