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 grad student. However, if the top scorers are all undergraduates, then each team will have three undergrads. 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 with development environments. 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 people will log in to the Sweet Hall machines and compose and compile their code there. I will support the judging of C or C++ code. If contestants request it, I can also judge Java programs, since this languages is also allowed at the regionals and world finals.

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.